diff options
Diffstat (limited to '1434.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 1434.txt | 6564 |
1 files changed, 6564 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/1434.txt b/1434.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c44287 --- /dev/null +++ b/1434.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6564 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Essays, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Essays + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 15, 2005 [eBook #1434] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays by Alice Meynell + + +Contents: + +WINDS AND WATERS + +Ceres' Runaway +Wells +Rain +The Tow Path +The Tethered Constellations +Rushes and Reeds + +IN A BOOK ROOM + +A Northern Fancy +Pathos +Anima Pellegrina! +A Point of Biography +The Honours of Mortality +Composure +The Little Language +A Counterchange +Harlequin Mercutio + +COMMENTARIES + +Laughter +The Rhythm of Life +Domus Angusta +Innocence and Experience +The Hours of Sleep +Solitude +Decivilized + +WAYFARING + +The Spirit of Place +Popular Burlesque +Have Patience, Little Saint +At Monastery Gates +The Sea Wall + +ARTS + +Tithonus +Symmetry and Incident +The Plaid +The Flower +Unstable Equilibrium +Victorian Caricature +The Point of Honour + +"THE CHEARFUL LADIE OF THE LIGHT" + +The Colour of Life +The Horizon +In July +Cloud +Shadows + +WOMEN AND BOOKS + +The Seventeenth Century +Mrs. Dingley +Prue +Mrs. Johnson +Madame Roland + +"THE DARLING YOUNG" + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird +The Child of Tumult +The Child of Subsiding Tumult +The Unready +That Pretty Person +Under the Early Stars +The Illusion of Historic Time + + + + +CERES' RUNAWAY + + +One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture of a +Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop--at least while the charming +quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality does not exist that +would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth of green in the high +places of the city. It is true that there have been the famous +captures--those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths of Caracalla; moreover +a less conspicuous running to earth takes place on the Appian Way, in +some miles of the solitude of the Campagna, where men are employed in +weeding the roadside. They slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the +ancient stones--rows of little corpses--for sweeping up, as at Upper +Tooting; one wonders why. The governors of the city will not succeed in +making the Via Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a +thriving commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and +shattered Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of +buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread," +says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a +couple of active scythes are kept at work there summer and spring--not +that the grass is long, for it is much overtopped by the bee-orchis, but +because flowers are not to laugh within reach of the civic vigilance. + +Yet, except that it is overtaken and put to death in these accessible +places, the wild summer growth of Rome has a prevailing success and +victory. It breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, lodges in the sun, +swings in the wind, takes wing to find the remotest ledges, and blooms +aloft. It makes light of the sixteenth century, of the seventeenth, and +of the eighteenth. As the historic ages grow cold it banters them alike. +The flagrant flourishing statue, the haughty facade, the broken pediment +(and Rome is chiefly the city of the broken pediment) are the +opportunities of this vagrant garden in the air. One certain church, +that is full of attitude, can hardly be aware that a crimson snapdragon +of great stature and many stalks and blossoms is standing on its furthest +summit tiptoe against its sky. The cornice of another church in the fair +middle of Rome lifts out of the shadows of the streets a row of +accidental marigolds. Impartial to the antique, the mediaeval, the +Renaissance early and late, the newer modern, this wild summer finds its +account in travertine and tufa, reticulated work, brick, stucco and +stone. "A bird of the air carries the matter," or the last sea-wind, +sombre and soft, or the latest tramontana, gold and blue, has lodged in a +little fertile dust the wild grass, wild wheat, wild oats! + +If Venus had her runaway, after whom the Elizabethans raised hue and cry, +this is Ceres'. The municipal authorities, hot-foot, cannot catch it. +And, worse than all, if they pause, dismayed, to mark the flight of the +agile fugitive safe on the arc of a flying buttress, or taking the place +of the fallen mosaics and coloured tiles of a twelfth-century tower, and +in any case inaccessible, the grass grows under their discomfited feet. +It actually casts a flush of green over their city _piazza_--the wide +light-grey pavements so vast that to keep them weeded would need an army +of workers. That army has not been employed; and grass grows in a small +way, but still beautifully, in the wide space around which the tramway +circles. Perhaps a hatred of its delightful presence is what chiefly +prompts the civic government in Rome to the effort to turn the _piazza_ +into a square. The shrub is to take the place not so much of the +pavement as of the importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten--and +the weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun takes +its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality in tears, +to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the "third" (which +is in truth the fourth) Rome. + +When I say grass I use the word widely. Italian grass is not turf; it is +full of things, and they are chiefly aromatic. No richer scents throng +each other, close and warm, than these from a little hand-space of the +grass one rests on, within the walls or on the plain, or in the Sabine or +the Alban hills. Moreover, under the name I will take leave to include +lettuce as it grows with a most welcome surprise on certain ledges of the +Vatican. That great and beautiful palace is piled, at various angles, as +it were house upon house, here magnificent, here careless, but with +nothing pretentious and nothing furtive. And outside one lateral window +on a ledge to the sun, prospers this little garden of random salad. +Buckingham Palace has nothing whatever of the Vatican dignity, but one +cannot well think of little cheerful cabbages sunning themselves on any +parapet it may have round a corner. + +Moreover, in Italy the vegetables--the table ones--have a wildness, a +suggestion of the grass, from lands at liberty for all the tilling. +Wildish peas, wilder asparagus--the field asparagus which seems to have +disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts in his +manifestations of frugality--and strawberries much less than half-way +from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale and corpulent +of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance lost--these are +all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. The most cultivated +of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet not a garden, but +something better, as her city is yet not a town but something better, and +her wilderness something better than a desert. In all the three there is +a trace of the little flying heels of the runaway. + + + + +WELLS + + +The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or unattractive +secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and perennial means of +life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and the plumber +sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They are covered, they +are carried, they are hushed, from the spring to the tap; and when their +voices are released at last in the London scullery, why, it can hardly be +said that the song is eloquent of the natural source of waters, whether +earthly or heavenly. There is not one of the circumstances of this +capture of streams--the company, the water-rate, and the rest--that is +not a sign of the ill-luck of modern devices in regard to style. For +style implies a candour and simplicity of means, an action, a gesture, as +it were, in the doing of small things; it is the ignorance of secret +ways; whereas the finish of modern life and its neatness seem to be +secured by a system of little shufflings and surprises. + +Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such fittings; +they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern +arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the +successes--which are not to be denied--of their outer part; the happy +little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, +being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph +and success of the present art of raiment--"fit" itself--is but the +result of a masked and lurking labour and device. + +The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of the +beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and slighter +actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the way. In a word, +the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is the dexterous +provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well-appointed, and +decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his hands; whereas the +artist craftsman of other times made a manifestation of his means. The +first hides the streams, under stress and pressure, in paltry pipes which +we all must make haste to call upon the earth to cover, and the second +lifted up the arches of the aqueduct. + +The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way to +ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure way. In +all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed by hidden means +must needs, from the beginning, prepare the abolition of dignity. This +is easy to understand, but it is less easy to explain the ill-fortune +that presses upon the expert workman, in search of easy ways to live, all +the ill-favoured materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them +serviceable and effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter +them, turning the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the daily +world. It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other hand, is it easy to +explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler devices which are, +after all, only less expert ways of labour. In those happy conditions, +neither from the material, suggesting to the workman, nor from the +workman looking askance at his unhandsome material, comes a first +proposal to pour in cement and make fast the underworld, out of sight. +But fate spares not that suggestion to the able and the unlucky at their +task of making neat work of the means, the distribution, the traffick of +life. + +The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the means +of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the sun, with +their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, no, they are +lapped in lead. + +King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals. + +Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The hiding-place +that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters of wells are, at +their deepest, in communication with the open sky. No other mine is so +visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible there; and it is fine to +think of the waters of this planet, shallow and profound, all charged +with shining suns, a multitude of waters multiplying suns, and carrying +that remote fire, as it were, within their unalterable freshness. Not a +pool without this visitant, or without passages of stars. As for the +wells of the Equator, you may think of them in their last recesses as the +daily bathing-places of light; a luminous fancy is able so to scatter +fitful figures of the sun, and to plunge them in thousands within those +deeps. + +Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the sun is +shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken across stones, +and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that fall through +chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile figures of leaves. To +all these waters the agile air has perpetual access. Not so can great +towns be watered, it will be said with reason; and this is precisely the +ill-luck of great towns. + +Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have the +grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every _campo_ has its +circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the pavement, its +soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the water below, and +the cheerful work of the cable. + +Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their plain +with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the watersheds +in the hills to the and city; and having the waters captive, they knew +how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in this Roman triumph. +They had the wit to boast thus of their brilliant prisoner. + +None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a more +invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the leap of the +heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They have remained in +Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the victory was longer than +empire, and their thousands of loud voices have never ceased to confess +the conquest of the cold floods, separated long ago, drawn one by one, +alive, to the head and front of the world. + +Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest fact of +Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains or to the +distance from the city without seeing the approach of those perpetual +waters--waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. This, then, +was the style of a master, who does not lapse from "incidental +greatness," has no mean precision, out of sight, to prepare the finish of +his phrases, and does not think the means and the approaches are to be +plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, without haste, and without +misgiving are all great things to be done, and neither interruption in +the doing nor ruin after they are done finds anything in them to betray. +There was never any disgrace of means, and when the world sees the work +broken through there is no disgrace of discovery. The labour of +Michelangelo's chisel, little more than begun, a Roman structure long +exposed in disarray--upon these the light of day looks full, and the +Roman and the Florentine have their unrefuted praise. + + + + +RAIN + + +Not excepting the falling stars--for they are far less sudden--there is +nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the familiar +rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from the +clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey with +them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, units, an +innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement of intricate +points. + +The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at once, +being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression +is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. What +we are apt to call our quick impression is rather our sensibly tardy, +unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly bewildered sense of things that +flash and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes +of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert +eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles +them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly +from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose moments are +not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of instants as invests +all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, and causes the past, a +moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon the skies. + +The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records of +our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant woodman's +stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is repeated in the +impressions of our clinging sight. The round wheel dazzles it, and the +stroke of the bird's wing shakes it off like a captivity evaded. +Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of these timid senses; and +their perception, outrun by the shower, shaken by the light, denied by +the shadow, eluded by the distance, makes the lingering picture that is +all our art. One of the most constant causes of all the mystery and +beauty of that art is surely not that we see by flashes, but that nature +flashes on our meditative eyes. There is no need for the impressionist +to make haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature doubles upon +him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility. + +Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the +ministration of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that the +husbandman is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet unclaimed in +the arms of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that he binds the shower +withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the coming cloud. His sense +of property takes aim and reckons distance and speed, and even as he +shoots a little ahead of the equally uncertain ground-game, he knows +approximately how to hit the cloud of his possession. So much is the +rain bound to the earth that, unable to compel it, man has yet found a +way, by lying in wait, to put his price upon it. The exhaustible cloud +"outweeps its rain," and only the inexhaustible sun seems to repeat and +to enforce his cumulative fires upon every span of ground, innumerable. +The rain is wasted upon the sea, but only by a fantasy can the sun's +waste be made a reproach to the ocean, the desert, or the sealed-up +street. Rossetti's "vain virtues" are the virtues of the rain, falling +unfruitfully. + +Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, as the +end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its flight warning +away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing shadow. It is a threat +and a reconciliation; it removes mountains compared with which the Alps +are hillocks, and makes a childlike peace between opposed heights and +battlements of heaven. + + + + +THE TOW PATH + + +A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided must +have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird your +shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on the even +path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames--the side of meadows. + +The elastic resistance of the line is a "heart-animating strain," only +too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of the +riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, are +swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green. The line +drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows taut; it +makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress of your easy +power. + +The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the joys of +"feeling hearts" according to the erroneous sentiment of a verse of +Moore's. The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the joys of +sensitive hands are few. Here, however, in the effectual act of towing, +is the ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy labourers with the +oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all other means of violence. Here, on +the long tow-path, between warm, embrowned meadows and opal waters, you +need but to walk in your swinging harness, and so take your friends up- +stream. + +You work merely as the mill-stream works--by simple movement. At lock +after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to the wheel +that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river have the same mere +force of progress. + +There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is the bright +Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing by so many +curves of low shore on the level of the world. + +Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as the +wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings the lighted +clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying high for +mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own weight. You will +not envy them for so brief a success. Did not Wordsworth want a "little +boat" for the air? Did not Byron call him a blockhead therefor? +Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing. + +All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. Even +the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than you, walking +your effectual walk with the line attached to your willing steps. Your +moderate strength of a mere everyday physical education gives you the +sufficient mastery of the tow-path. + +If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give it +life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant +burden--the yielding check--than ever before. An unharnessed walk must +begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty. It is +easier than towing? So is the drawing of water in a sieve easier to the +arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart. + +To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the wings of +metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the spirit and the +line. + +No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; it depends +upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any depressing show of +helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it apt to set you at naught +or charge you with a make-believe. It accompanies, it almost +anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just so much as to give your +briskness good reason, and to justify you if you should take to still +more nimble heels. All your haste, moreover, does but waken a more +brilliantly-sounding ripple. + +The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems to +carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your figure, +enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes free. No +watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. What little +outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer smoothly towed. +Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your head high and watch the +birds, or listen to them. They fly in such lofty air that they seem to +turn blue in the blue sky. A flash of their flight shows silver for a +moment, but they are blue birds in that sunny distance above, as +mountains are blue, and horizons. The days are so still that you do not +merely hear the cawing of the rooks--you overhear their hundred private +croakings and creakings, the soliloquy of the solitary places swept by +wings. + +As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at an end. +This year's robins are in full voice; and the only song that is not for +love or nesting--the childish song of boy-birds, the freshest and +youngest note--is, by a happy paradox, that of an autumnal voice. + +Here is no hoot, nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist's +wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding note. +Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, stealthy soles of +the barefooted in the south. + + + + +THE TETHERED CONSTELLATIONS + + +It is no small thing--no light discovery--to find a river Andromeda and +Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer night +around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two--delicate visitants of +streams--we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of the eyes, so fine +and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the southern waves may show the +light--not the image--of the evening or the morning planet. But this, in +a pool of the country Thames at night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it +is the startling image of a whole large constellation burning in the +flood. + +These reflected heavens are different heavens. On a darker and more +vacant field than that of the real skies, the shape of the Lyre or the +Bear has an altogether new and noble solitude; and the waters play a +painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two movements +shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright flashing of +constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark flashes of the vague +bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien motion. +Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars escapes and +returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady night, those +constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a suddenness of +gleaming life. You imagine that some unexampled gale might make them +seem to shine with such a movement in the veritable sky; yet nothing but +deep water, seeming still in its incessant flight and rebound, could +really show such altered stars. The flood lets a constellation fly, as +Juliet's "wanton" with a tethered bird, only to pluck it home again. At +moments some rhythmic flux of the water seems about to leave the darkly- +set, widely-spaced Bear absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, +and refuse to imitate the skies, and all the water is obscure; then one +broken star returns, then fragments of another, and a third and a fourth +flit back to their noble places, brilliantly vague, wonderfully visible, +mobile, and unalterable. There is nothing else at once so keen and so +elusive. + +The aspen poplar had been in captive flight all day, but with no such +vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft night are +reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen by the large and +vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the Pleiades. + +There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in the +river Thames--the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys on all +the winds up and down England and across it in the end of summer. It is +a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a-tiptoe wherever the +wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty points when it is not +flying. The streets of London are among its many highways, for it is +fragile enough to go far in all sorts of weather. But it gets disabled +if a rough gust tumbles it on the water so that its finely-feathered feet +are wet. On gentle breezes it is able to cross dry-shod, walking the +waters. + +All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is +far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle plants +(or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to the tops of +many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather have to meet it +in battalions than in these invincible units astray. But if the farmer +owes it a lawful grudge, there is many a rigid riverside garden wherein +it would be a great pleasure to sow the thistles of the nearest pasture. + + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another growth +that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned to winter +than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east wind, more than +the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, rushes, canes, and reeds +were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On them the nimble winds played +their dry music. They were part of the winter. It looked through them +and spoke through them. They were spears and javelins in array to the +sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those that +stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour of his +light look through--low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They belong +to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the river, +beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes perilous +footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low lands, the sign +of streams. They grow tall between you and the near horizon of flat +lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; and near them grow +flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness of +the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction of +its points, its needles, and its resolute right lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need the +sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and +betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. +Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a +mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their +sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in +the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses +many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a +thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, +are swept into a single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of +the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds in +England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed +(except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has in +fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, +rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not +conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a gipsy +people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is rather a +gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if he is a man of +sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior doubts. His property, he +says, goes right down to the centre of the earth, in the shape of a +wedge; how high up it goes into the air it would be difficult to say, and +obviously the shape of the wedge must be continued in the direction of +increase. We may therefore proclaim his right to the clouds and their +cargo. It is true that as his ground game is apt to go upon his +neighbour's land to be shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his +showers elsewhere. But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed +country-house sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But +he who tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes should +happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his--he had the +pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for a time. But the +bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very thorough landowner, but +a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would endure this sort of thing no +longer, and went out armed and had a long acre of sedges scythed to +death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and upon +margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a road. No +wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and their primroses +are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and then, though, one has a +kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds of trees--the Corot trees. +Standing at a distance from the more ornamental trees, from those of +fuller foliage, and from all the indeciduous shrubs and the conifers +(manifest property, every one), two or three translucent aspens, with +which the very sun and the breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes +seemed to wear a certain look--an extra-territorial look, let us call it. +They are suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not say +so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, are in +spirit almost as extra-territorial as the rushes. In proof of this he +very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. The view is +better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are in his ground +right enough, there is a something about their heads--. But the reason +he gives for wishing them away is merely that they are "thin." A man +does not always say everything. + + + + +A NORTHERN FANCY + + +"I remember," said Dryden, writing to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat Lee, +who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and witty answer +to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to write like a +madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing to write like a +madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.'" Nevertheless, +the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light high note, in +English poetry throughout two centuries at least, and one English poet +lately set that untethered lyric, the mad maid's song, flying again. + +A revolt against the oppression of the late sixteenth and early +seventeenth centuries--the age of the re-discovery of death; against the +crime of tragedies; against the tyranny of Italian example that had made +the poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, inconstancy--may +have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this tune of innocence, and +this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. "I heard a maid in Bedlam," +runs the old song. High and low the poets tried for that note, and the +singer was nearly always to be a maid and crazed for love. Except for +the temporary insanity so indifferently worn by the soprano of the now +deceased kind of Italian opera, and except that a recent French story +plays with the flitting figure of a village girl robbed of her wits by +woe (and this, too, is a Russian villager, and the Southern author may +have found his story on the spot, as he seems to aver) I have not met +elsewhere than in England this solitary and detached poetry of the treble +note astray. + +At least, it is principally a northern fancy. Would the steadfast +Cordelia, if she had not died, have lifted the low voice to that high +note, so delicately untuned? She who would not be prodigal of words +might yet, indeed, have sung in the cage, and told old tales, and laughed +at gilded butterflies of the court of crimes, and lived so long in the +strange health of an emancipated brain as to wear out + + Packs and sects of great ones + That ebb and flow by the moon. + +She, if King Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry and +strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the maid called +Barbara. + +It was surely the name of the maid who died singing, as Desdemona +remembers, that lingered in the ear of Wordsworth. Of all the songs of +the distracted, written in the sanity of high imagination, there is +nothing more passionate than that beginning "'Tis said that some have +died for love." To one who has always recognized the greatness of this +poem and who possibly had known and forgotten how much Ruskin prized it, +it was a pleasure to find the judgement afresh in _Modern Painters_, +where this grave lyric is cited for an example of great imagination. It +is the mourning and restless song of the lover ("the pretty Barbara +died") who has not yet broken free from memory into the alien world of +the insane. + +Barbara's lover dwelt in the scene of his love, as Dryden's Adam entreats +the expelling angel that he might do, protesting that he could endure to +lose "the bliss, but not the place." (And although this dramatic +"Paradise Lost" of Dryden's is hardly named by critics except to be +scorned, this is assuredly a fine and imaginative thought.) It is +nevertheless as a wanderer that the crazed creature visits the fancy of +English poets with such a wild recurrence. The Englishman of the far +past, barred by climate, bad roads, ill-lighted winters, and the +intricate life and customs of the little town, must have been generally a +home-keeper. No adventure, no setting forth, and small liberty, for him. +But Tom-a-Bedlam, the wild man in patches or in ribbons, with his wallet +and his horn for alms of food or drink, came and went as fitfully as the +storm, free to suffer all the cold--an unsheltered creature; and the +chill fancy of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey +that had no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the +swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it was +one who wrote like a madman and not like a fool. + +Not a town, not a village, not a solitary cottage during the English +Middle Ages was unvisited by him who frightened the children; they had a +name for him as for the wild birds--Robin Redbreast, Dicky Swallow, +Philip Sparrow, Tom Tit, Tom-a-Bedlam. And after him came the "Abram +men," who were sane parodies of the crazed, and went to the fairs and +wakes in motley. Evelyn says of a fop: "All his body was dressed like a +maypole, or a Tom-a-Bedlam's cap." But after the Civil Wars they +vanished, and no man knew how. In time old men remembered them only to +remember that they had not seen any such companies or solitary wanderers +of late years. + +The mad maid of the poets is a vagrant too, when she is free, and not +singing within Bedlam early in the morning, "in the spring." Wordsworth, +who dealt with the legendary fancy in his "Ruth," makes the crazed one a +wanderer in the hills whom a traveller might see by chance, rare as an +Oread, and nearly as wild as Echo herself:- + + I too have passed her in the hills + Setting her little water-mills. + +His heart misgives him to think of the rheumatism that must befall in +such a way of living; and his grave sense of civilization, _bourgeois_ in +the humane and noble way that is his own, restores her after death to the +company of man, to the "holy bell," which Shakespeare's Duke remembered +in banishment, and to the congregation and their "Christian psalm." + +The older poets were less responsible, less serious and more sad, than +Wordsworth, when they in turn were touched by the fancy of the maid +crazed by love. They left her to her light immortality; and she might be +drenched in dews; they would not desire to reconcile nor bury her. She +might have her hair torn by the bramble, but her heart was light after +trouble. "Many light hearts and wings"--she had at least the bird's +heart, and the poet lent to her voice the wings of his verses. + +There is nothing in our poetry less modern than she. The vagrant woman +of later feeling was rather the sane creature of Ebenezer Elliott's fine +lines in "The Excursion"-- + + Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried! + Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul! + +Trouble did not "try" the Elizabethan wild one, it undid her. She had no +child, or if there had ever been a child of hers, she had long forgotten +how it died. She hailed the wayfarer, who was more weary than she, with +a song; she haunted the cheerful dawn; her "good-morrow" rings from +Herrick's poem, fresh as cock-crow. She knows that her love is dead, and +her perplexity has regard rather to the many kinds of flowers than to the +old story of his death; they distract her in the splendid meadows. + +All the tragic world paused to hear that lightest of songs, as the +tragedy of Hamlet pauses for the fitful voice of Ophelia. Strange was +the charm of this perpetual alien, and unknown to us now. The world has +become once again as it was in the mad maid's heyday, less serious and +more sad than Wordsworth; but it has not recovered, and perhaps will +never recover, that sweetness. Blake's was a more starry madness. +Crabbe, writing of village sorrows, thought himself bound to recur to the +legend of the mad maid, but his "crazed maiden" is sane enough, sorrowful +but dull, and sings of her own "burning brow," as Herrick's wild one +never sang; nor is there any smile in her story, though she talks of +flowers, or, rather, "the herbs I loved to rear"; and perhaps she is the +surest of all signs that the strange inspiration of the past centuries +was lost, vanished like Tom-a-Bedlam himself. It had been wholly +English, whereas the English eighteenth century was not wholly English. + +It is not to be imagined that any hard Southern mind could ever have +played in poetry with such a fancy; or that Petrarch, for example, could +so have foregone the manifestation of intelligence and intelligible +sentiment. And as to Dante, who put the two eternities into the +momentary balance of the human will, cold would be his disregard of this +northern dream of innocence. If the mad maid was an alien upon earth, +what were she in the Inferno? What word can express her strangeness +there, her vagrancy there? And with what eyes would they see this dewy +face glancing in at the windows of that City? + + + + +PATHOS + + +A fugitive writer wrote not long ago on the fugitive page of a magazine: +"For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is the most real +personage of the piece, and not without some hints of the pathos that is +worked out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and Malvolio." +Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or +their yet later equivalents, compared with which "le spleen" of the +French Byronic age was gay, done so much for us? Is there to be no +laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real- +life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in +his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. +By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is +of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is +precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they +can make shift to see through that: but the Snug within, the human Snug. +And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in that latent form which is the +more appealing; and discouraging questions arise as to the end of old +Double; and Harpagon is the tragic figure of Monomania; and as to Argan, +ah, what havoc in "les entrailles de Monsieur" must have been wrought by +those prescriptions! _Et patati, et patata_. + +It may be only too true that the actual world is "with pathos delicately +edged." For Malvolio living we should have had living sympathies; so +much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a +credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a +chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the weaver our pity might be reached +for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource +condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. +But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the +privilege of literature to treat things singly, without the +after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of the many- +sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this reason, our refuge? +Fortunately unreal is his world when he will have it so; and there we may +laugh with open heart at a grotesque man: without misgiving, without +remorse, without reluctance. If great creating Nature has not assumed +for herself she has assuredly secured to the great creating poet the +right of partiality, of limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of +taking one impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and +Nature are complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with one +another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the corner, +as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the flat--(the +borrowing of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; but let this +pass, as it is apt)--is but another sign of the general lack of a sense +of the separation between Nature and her sentient mirror in the mind. In +some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is as Nature herself, +all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in comedy--he is partial, he is +impressionary, he refuses to know what is not to his purpose, he is light- +heartedly capricious. And in that gay, wilful world it is that he gives +us--or used to give us, for even the word is obsolete--the pleasure of +_oubliance_. + +Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have caught him +a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those like-minded will +assuredly also continue to show how much more completely human, how much +more sensitive, how much more responsible, is the art of the critic than +the world has ever dreamt till now. And, superior in so much, they will +still count their importunate sensibility as the choicest of their gifts. +And Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his +admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud by +the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears of it +are wet. + + + + +ANIMA PELLEGRINA! + + +Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger's +fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its +own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other +tongues. Easily--shall I say cheaply?--spiritual, for example, was the +nation that devised the name _anima pellegrina_, wherewith to crown a +creature admired. "Pilgrim soul" is a phrase for any language, but +"pilgrim soul!" addressed, singly and sweetly to one who cannot be over- +praised, "pilgrim-soul!" is a phrase of fondness, the high homage of a +lover, of one watching, of one who has no more need of common flatteries, +but has admired and gazed while the object of his praises visibly +surpassed them--this is the facile Italian ecstasy, and it rises into an +Italian heaven. + +It was by chance, and in an old play, that I came upon this impetuous, +sudden, and single sentence of admiration, as it were a sentence of life +passed upon one charged with inestimable deeds; and the modern editor had +thought it necessary to explain the exclamation by a note. It was, he +said, poetical. + +_Anima pellegrina_ seems to be Italian of no later date than +Pergolese's airs, and suits the time as the familiar phrase of the more +modern love-song suited the day of Bellini. But it is only Italian, +bygone Italian, and not a part of the sweet past of any other European +nation, but only of this. + +To the same local boundaries and enclosed skies belongs the charm of +those buoyant words:- + + Felice chi vi mira, + Ma piu felice chi per voi sospira! + +And it is not only a charm of elastic sound or of grace; that would be +but a property of the turn of speech. It is rather the profounder +advantage whereby the rhymes are freighted with such feeling as the very +language keeps in store. In another tongue you may sing, "happy who +looks, happier who sighs"; but in what other tongue shall the little +meaning be so sufficient, and in what other shall you get from so weak an +antithesis the illusion of a lovely intellectual epigram? Yet it is not +worthy of an English reader to call it an illusion; he should rather be +glad to travel into the place of a language where the phrase _is_ +intellectual, impassioned, and an epigram; and should thankfully for the +occasion translate himself, and not the poetry. + +I have been delighted to use a present current phrase whereof the charm +may still be unknown to Englishmen--"_piuttosto bruttini_." See what +an all-Italian spirit is here, and what contempt, not reluctant, but +tolerant and familiar. You may hear it said of pictures, or works of art +of several kinds, and you confess at once that not otherwise should they +be condemned. _Brutto_--ugly--is the word of justice, the word for any +language, everywhere translatable, a circular note, to be exchanged +internationally with a general meaning, wholesale, in the course of the +European concert. But _bruttino_ is a soothing diminutive, a diminutive +that forbears to express contempt, a diminutive that implies innocence, +and is, moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging in the +rear--"rather than not." "Rather ugly than not, and ugly in a little way +that we need say few words about--the fewer the better;" nay, this +paraphrase cannot achieve the homely Italian quality whereby the printed +and condemnatory criticism is made a family affair that shall go no +further. After the sound of it, the European concert seems to be +composed of brass instruments. + +How unlike is the house of English language and the enclosure into which +a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything here more +essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) than our +particle "un"? Poor are those living languages that have not our use of +so rich a negative. The French equivalent in adjectives reaches no +further than the adjective itself--or hardly; it does not attain the +participle; so that no French or Italian poet has the words "unloved", +"unforgiven." None such, therefore, has the opportunity of the gravest +and the most majestic of all ironies. In our English, the words that are +denied are still there--"loved," "forgiven": excluded angels, who stand +erect, attesting what is not done, what is undone, what shall not be +done. + +No merely opposite words could have so much denial, or so much pain of +loss, or so much outer darkness, or so much barred beatitude in sight. +All-present, all-significant, all-remembering, all-foretelling is the +word, and it has a plenitude of knowledge. + +We have many more conspicuous possessions that are, like this, proper to +character and thought, and by no means only an accident of untransferable +speech. And it is impossible for a reader, who is a lover of languages +for their spirit, to pass the words of untravelled excellence, proper to +their own garden enclosed, without recognition. Never may they be +disregarded or confounded with the universal stock. If I would not so +neglect _piuttosto bruttini_, how much less a word dominating +literature! And of such words of ascendancy and race there is no great +English author but has abundant possession. No need to recall them. But +even writers who are not great have, here and there, proved their full +consciousness of their birthright. Thus does a man who was hardly an +author, Haydon the painter, put out his hand to take his rights. He has +incomparable language when he is at a certain page of his life; at that +time he sate down to sketch his child, dying in its babyhood, and the +head he studied was, he says, full of "power and grief." + +This is a phrase of different discovery from that which reveals a local +rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an intellectual +place--_Felice chi vi mira_--or the art-critic's phrase--_piuttosto +bruttini_--of easy, companionable, and equal contempt. + +As for French, if it had no other sacred words--and it has many--who +would not treasure the language that has given us--no, not that has given +us, but that has kept for its own--_ensoleille_? Nowhere else is the sun +served with such a word. It is not to be said or written without a +convincing sense of sunshine, and from the very word come light and +radiation. The unaccustomed north could not have made it, nor the +accustomed south, but only a nation part-north and part-south; therefore +neither England nor Italy can rival it. But there needed also the senses +of the French--those senses of which they say far too much in every +second-class book of their enormous, their general second-class, but +which they have matched in their time with some inimitable words. Perhaps +that matching was done at the moment of the full literary consciousness +of the senses, somewhere about the famous 1830. For I do not think +_ensoleille_ to be a much older word--I make no assertion. Whatever its +origin, may it have no end! They cannot weary us with it; for it seems +as new as the sun, as remote as old Provence; village, hill-side, +vineyard, and chestnut wood shine in the splendour of the word, the air +is light, and white things passing blind the eyes--a woman's linen, white +cattle, shining on the way from shadow to shadow. A word of the sense of +sight, and a summer word, in short, compared with which the paraphrase is +but a picture. For _ensoleille_ I would claim the consent of all +readers--that they shall all acknowledge the spirit of that French. But +perhaps it is a mere personal preference that makes _le jour +s'annonce_ also sacred. + +If the hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," was written in Latin, this could be +only that it might in time find its true language and incomparable phrase +at last--that it might await the day of life in its proper German. I +found it there (and knew at once the authentic verse, and knew at once +for what tongue it had been really destined) in the pages of the prayer- +book of an apple-woman at an Innsbruck church, and in the accents of her +voice. + + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + +There is hardly a writer now--of the third class probably not one--who +has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of Nature; not +one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a modern reference to +the manifold death and destruction with which the air, the branches, the +mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice of +the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and of the +dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are they--all the +dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their +little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence +concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is +true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a +snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a +kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some +little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a +meaner man might hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you +twinkle back at the bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes violently +into other forms, flashes without pause into another flame; but not all. +Amid all the killing there must be much dying. There are, for instance, +few birds of prey left in our more accessible counties now, and many +thousands of birds must die uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if +their killing is done so modestly, so then is their dying also. Short +lives have all these wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of +them always alive; they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet +they keep the millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so complete, +that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth conspired that +February to make known all the secrets; everything was published. Death +was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, are not more resolute than +was the frost of '95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and forced +to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which the art and +imagination of England combined to raise to his memory at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought wrong. +There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of a bird and in +exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a soldier--_passe +encore_. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. And the death of +the birds is so little characteristic of them that, as has just been +said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, except only in the +case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled to die with +observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a rule. There is no +display of the battlefield in the fields. There is no tale of the game- +bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with strange decorum. You may +pass a fine season under the trees, and see nothing dead except here and +there where a boy has been by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. +There is nothing like a butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the wild +world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have turned over +scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether now and again +there might be a "Life" which was not more emphatically a death. But +there never is a modern biography that has taken the hint of Nature. One +and all, these books have the disproportionate illness, the death out of +all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been rightly +his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is assumed to be news +for the first comer. Which of us would suffer the details of any +physical suffering, over and done in our own lives, to be displayed and +described? This is not a confidence we have a mind to make; and no one +is authorised to ask for attention or pity on our behalf. The story of +pain ought not to be told of us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not +be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more exclusively, +and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and illusions of a long +delirium. When he is in common language not himself, amends should be +made for so bitter a paradox; he should be allowed such solitude as is +possible to the alienated spirit; he should be left to the "not himself," +and spared the intrusion against which he can so ill guard that he could +hardly have even resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door of +Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His mortal +illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather affected +objection is taken every now and then to the publication of some facts +(others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. Nevertheless, +these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is not biography is +the detail of the accident of the manner of his death, the detail of his +cremation. Or if it was to be told--told briefly--it was certainly not +for marble. Shelley's death had no significance, except inasmuch as he +died young. It was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was +a frost of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an +insignificant fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill- +named biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death +is a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last +chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of +all survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, this is, +for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. They +have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they have to +mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a mingling of +distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not known even to +dreams save in that first year of separation. But they are not +biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously secret +because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may surprise +everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The chase goes on +everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase seems to cause no +perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life is undefended, +careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost ceased, to +paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually in that British +School of water-colour art, stippled, of which surrounding nations, it +was agreed, were envious. They must have killed their bird to paint him, +for he is not to be caught dead. A bird is more easily caught alive than +dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily--too easily--caught dead. Minor +artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good sculptor and +a University together modelled their Shelley on his back, unessentially +drowned; and everybody may read about the sick mind of Dante Rossetti. + + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, to +devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated +papers--the enormous production of art in black and white--is assuredly a +confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working for. Fifty +years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; these were the +commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend to the beauty of +things of use that were destined to be broken and worn out, and they +looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad pictures; so that +what to do with their bad pictures in addition to our own has become the +problem of the nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have +began to learn that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. +Art consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows a +most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," and for +oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap costs +the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the inevitable +that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in the singular +and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is done for so short +a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the acceptance of death, +inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. There is a real circulation of +blood-quick use, brief beauty, abolition, recreation. The honour of the +day is for ever the honour of that day. It goes into the treasury of +things that are honestly and--completely ended and done with. And when +can so happy a thing be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise +would hesitate? To be honourable for one day--one named and dated day, +separate from all other days of the ages--or to be for an unlimited time +tedious? + + + + +COMPOSURE + + +Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure do +these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness +of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly. +In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an +aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble +English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some +courteous, deferent distance from the centre of that human heart, in the +very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in +language such an educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is +a persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note +indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, teaches a +temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the tone--the +voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counterchange, returns to +the writer's touch or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his +note. Much has always been said, many things to the purpose have been +thought, of the power and the responsibility of the note. Of the +legislation and influence of the tone I have been led to think by +comparing the tranquillity of Johnson and the composure of Canning with +the stimulated and close emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers +who have entered as disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English. + +For if every language be a school, more significantly and more +educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that +part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is made +implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French author is +without these. They are of all the heritages of the English writer the +most important. He receives a language of dual derivation. He may +submit himself to either University, whither he will take his impulse and +his character, where he will leave their influence, and whence he will +accept their re-education. The Frenchman has certainly a style to +develop within definite limits; but he does not subject himself to +suggestions tending mainly hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of +various race within one literature. Such a choice of subjection is the +singular opportunity of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the +necessary mingling. Happily that mingling has been done once for all for +us all. Nay, one of the most charming things that a master of English +can achieve is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their +results so exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools +are made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove +them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world knew +they were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as to which +school of words shall have the place of honour in the great and sensitive +moments of an author's style: which school shall be used for +conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And the choice +being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses of so many hearts +quickened in thought and feeling in this day suggests to me a deliberate +return to the recollectedness of the more tranquil language. "Doubtless +there is a place of peace." + +A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to charge +some of the moralists of the eighteenth century with an indifference into +which they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes +educated them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable +of coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is +no knowing to what distance the removal of the "appropriate sentiment" +from the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal +in language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly +removed eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato +hailed the "pleasing hope," the "fond desire"; and the touch of war was +distant from him who conceived his "repulsed battalions" and his +"doubtful battle." What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness +were restored once more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men +were too eager to go into the workshop of language. There were +unreasonable raptures over the mere making of common words. "A +hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!" they cried; and for the +love of German the youngest daughter of Chrysale herself might have +consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It seemed to be forgotten that a +language with all its construction visible is a language little fitted +for the more advanced mental processes; that its images are material; and +that, on the other hand, a certain spiritualizing and subtilizing effect +of alien derivations is a privilege and an advantage incalculable--that +to possess that half of the language within which Latin heredities lurk +and Romanesque allusions are at play is to possess the state and security +of a dead tongue, without the death. + +But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most beautiful +and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare. +"Superfluous kings," "A lass unparalleled," "Multitudinous seas": we +needed not to wait for the eighteenth century or for the nineteenth or +for the twentieth to learn the splendour of such encounters, of such +differences, of such nuptial unlikeness and union. But it is well that +we should learn them afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not +resist the rhythmic reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the +Latin. Such a reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We +want to quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the +poise and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong +movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse +might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with +a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for +his son. But it should not be attempted without a distinct intention of +submission on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against, +trespassed upon, used loosely, is like a law outstripped, defied--to the +dignity neither of the rebel nor of the rule. + +To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the very +closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. Shall +not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature, +assume the honour, the hesitation, the leisure, the reconciliation of the +Word? + + + + +THE LITTLE LANGUAGE + + +Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish master +of the magic of local things. + +In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it nourishes; +inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom Goldoni and Gallina +and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois of the Veneto, use no +dialect at all. + +Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with so +much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their almost +unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into the homes of +dialect, does but show us how the language staggers under such a stress, +how it breaks down, and resigns that office. One of the finest of the +characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is that old manageress +of the narrow things of the house whose daughter is dying insane. I have +called the dialect a shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not +cower within; her resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely +refuge, suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several +centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid none +but light loads upon it. They caused it to carry no more in their homely +plays than it carries in homely life. Their work leaves it what it +was--the talk of a people talking much about few things; a people like +our own and any other in their lack of literature, but local and all +Italian in their lack of silence. + +Common speech is surely a greater part of life to such a people than to +one less pleased with chatter or more pleased with books. I am writing +of men, women, and children (and children are not forgotten, since we +share a patois with children on terms of more than common equality) who +possess, for all occasions of ceremony and opportunities of dignity, a +general, national, liberal, able, and illustrious tongue, charged with +all its history and all its achievements; for the speakers of dialect, of +a certain rank, speak Italian, too. But to tamper with their dialect, or +to take it from them, would be to leave them houseless and exposed in +their daily business. So much does their patois seem to be their refuge +from the heavy and multitudinous experiences of a literary tongue, that +the stopping of a fox's earth might be taken as the image of any act that +should spoil or stop the talk of the associated seclusion of their town, +and leave them in the bleakness of a larger patriotism. + +The Venetian people, the Genoese, and the other speakers of languages +that might all have proved right "Italian" had not Dante, Petrarch and +Boccaccio written in Tuscan, can neither write nor be taught hard things +in their dialect, although they can live, whether easy lives or hard, and +evidently can die, therein. The hands and feet that have served the +villager and the citizen at homely tasks have all the lowliness of his +patois, to his mind; and when he must perforce yield up their employment, +we may believe that it is a simple thing to die in so simple and so +narrow a language, one so comfortable, neighbourly, tolerant, and +compassionate; so confidential; so incapable, ignorant, unappalling, +inapt to wing any wearied thought upon difficult flight or to spur it +upon hard travelling. + +Not without words is mental pain, or even physical pain, to be undergone; +but the words that have done no more than order the things of the narrow +street are not words to put a fine edge or a piercing point to any human +pang. It may even well be that to die in dialect is easier than to die +in the eloquence of Manfred, though that declaimed language, too, is +doubtless a defence, if one of a different manner. + +These writers in Venetian--they are named because in no other Italian +dialect has work so popular as Goldoni's been done, nor so excellent as +Signor Fogazzaro's--have left the unlettered local language in which they +loved to deal, to its proper limitations. They have not given weighty +things into its charge, nor made it heavily responsible. They have added +nothing to it; nay, by writing it they might even be said to have made it +duller, had it not been for the reader and the actor. Insomuch as the +intense expressiveness of a dialect--of a small vocabulary in the mouth +of a dramatic people--lies in the various accent wherewith a southern +citizen knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to restore +its life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is forbidden to +search for the word, for there is none lurking for his choice; but of +tones, allusions, and of references and inferences of the voice, the +speaker of dialect is a master. No range of phrases can be his, but he +has the more or the less confidential inflection, until at times the +close communication of the narrow street becomes a very conspiracy. + +Let it be borne in mind that dialect properly so called is something all +unlike, for instance, the mere jargon of London streets. The difference +may be measured by the fact that Italian dialects have a highly organized +and orderly grammar. The Londoner cannot keep the small and loose order +of the grammar of good English; the Genoese conjugates his patois verbs, +with subjunctives and all things of that handsome kind, lacked by the +English of Universities. + +The middle class--the _piccolo mondo_--that shares Italian dialect with +the poor are more strictly local in their manners than either the opulent +or the indigent of the same city. They have moreover the busy +intelligence (which is the intellect of patois) at its keenest. Their +speech keeps them a sequestered place which is Italian, Italian beyond +the ken of the traveller, and beyond the reach of alteration. And--what +is pretty to observe--the speakers are well conscious of the characters +of this intimate language. An Italian countryman who has known no other +climate will vaunt, in fervent platitudes, his Italian sun; in like +manner he is conscious of the local character of his language, and tucks +himself within it at home, whatever Tuscan he may speak abroad. A +properly spelt letter, Swift said, would seem to expose him and Mrs +Dingley and Stella to the eyes of the world; but their little language, +ill-written, was "snug." + +Lovers have made a little language in all times; finding the nobler +language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? +discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in despair +thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this departure from +English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal lovers, no doubt, +would be so simple as to be grave. That is a tenable opinion. +Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have +exchanged language imitated from the children they doubtless never +studied, and perhaps never loved. Why so? They might have chosen broken +English of other sorts--that, for example, which was once thought amusing +in farce, as spoken by the Frenchman conceived by the Englishman--a +complication of humour fictitious enough, one might think, to please +anyone; or else a fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; +or the masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs +Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. But none of these found +favour. The choice has always been of the language of children. Let us +suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping Venus in the Titian +picture, and the noble child that rides his lion erect with a background +of Venetian gloomy dusk, may be the inspirers of those prattlings. "See +then thy selfe likewise art lyttle made," says Spenser's Venus to her +child. + +Swift was the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised it in +Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her clumsily back +into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged in her a childhood +he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest dea, nite dealest logue." +It is a real good-night. It breathes tenderness from that moody and +uneasy bed of projects. + + + + +A COUNTERCHANGE + + +"Il s'est trompe de defunte." The writer of this phrase had his sense of +that portly manner of French, and his burlesque is fine; but--the paradox +must be risked--because he was French he was not able to possess all its +grotesque mediocrity to the full; that is reserved for the English +reader. The words are in the mouth of a widower who, approaching his +wife's tomb, perceives there another "monsieur." "Monsieur," again; the +French reader is deprived of the value of this word, too, in its place; +it says little or nothing to him, whereas the Englishman, who has no word +of the precise bourgeois significance that it sometimes bears, but who +must use one of two English words of different allusion--man or I +gentleman--knows the exact value of its commonplace. The serious +Parisian, then, sees "un autre monsieur;" as it proves anon, there had +been a divorce in the history of the lady, but the later widower is not +yet aware of this, and explains to himself the presence of "un monsieur" +in his own place by that weighty phrase, "Il s'est trompe de defunte." + +The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with national +character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking author who +was debarred by his own language from possessing the whole of his own +comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his English that an Englishman +does possess it. Your official, your professional Parisian has a +vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled mediocrity. When the novelist +perceives this he does not perceive it all, because some of the words are +the only words in use. Take an author at his serious moments, when he is +not at all occupied with the comedy of phrases, and he now and then +touches a word that has its burlesque by mere contrast with English. +"L'Histoire d'un Crime," of Victor Hugo, has so many of these touches as +to be, by a kind of reflex action, a very school of English. The whole +incident of the omnibus in that grave work has unconscious international +comedy. The Deputies seated in the interior of the omnibus had been, it +will be remembered, shut out of their Chamber by the perpetrator of the +Coup d'Etat, but each had his official scarf. Scarf--pish!--"l'echarpe!" +"Ceindre l'echarpe"--there is no real English equivalent. Civic +responsibility never was otherwise adequately expressed. An indignant +deputy passed his scarf through the window of the omnibus, as an appeal +to the public, "et l'agita." It is a pity that the French reader, having +no simpler word, is not in a position to understand the slight burlesque. +Nay, the mere word "public," spoken with this peculiar French good faith, +has for us I know not what untransferable gravity. + +There is, in short, a general international counterchange. It is +altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, with its +extremely "specialized" manner of industry, that one people should make a +phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. And, in fact, there are +certain French authors to whom should be secured the use of the literary +German whereof Germans, and German women in particular, ought with all +severity to be deprived. For Germans often tell you of words in their +own tongue that are untranslatable; and accordingly they should not be +translated, but given over in their own conditions, unaltered, into safer +hands. There would be a clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a +better order in the phrase; the possessors of an alien word, with the +thought it secures, would find also their advantage. + +So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English ears. It +is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate householder, for +example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the conservatory "pour +retablir la circulation," and the other who describes himself "sous-chef +de bureau dans l'enregistrement," and he who proposes to "faire hommage" +of a doubtful turbot to the neighbouring "employe de l'octroi"--these and +all their like speak commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own +country the perfection of their dulness. We only, who have the +alternative of plainer and fresher words, understand it. It is not the +least of the advantages of our own dual English that we become sensible +of the mockery of certain phrases that in France have lost half their +ridicule, uncontrasted. + +Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation in +all Latin languages--rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, either +majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French this proffers a +frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of an Englishman, no +longer detects. A guard on a French railway, who advised two travellers +to take a certain train for fear they should be obliged to "vegeter" for +a whole hour in the waiting-room of such or such a station seemed to the +less practised tourist to be a fresh kind of unexpected humourist. + +One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and +subscriptions in France has more than the intentional comedy of the farce- +writer; one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his visitors +in the country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to them: "Nous jouons +cinquante centimes--les benefices seront verses integralement a la +souscription qui est ouverte a la commune pour la construction de notre +maison d'ecole." + +"Fletrir," again. Nothing could be more rhetorical than this perfectly +common word of controversy. The comic dramatist is well aware of the +spent violence of this phrase, with which every serious Frenchman will +reply to opponents, especially in public matters. But not even the comic +dramatist is aware of the last state of refuse commonplace that a word of +this kind represents. Refuse rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson's +"fossil poetry," would seem to be the right name for human language as +some of the processes of the several recent centuries have left it. + +The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an Englishman. +They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as "Il s'est trompe de +defunte." In the report of that dull, incomparable sentence there is +enough humour, and subtle enough, for both the maker and the reader; for +the author who perceives the comedy as well as custom will permit, and +for the reader who takes it with the freshness of a stranger. But if not +so keen as this, the current word of French comedy is of the same quality +of language. When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, +for instance, the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: +"Il s'est empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full +sense of the several languages that exist in English at the service of +the several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology of +official France, high or low--daily France--a gratuitous and uncovenanted +smile to be had. With this the wit of the report of French literature +has not little to do. Nor is it in itself, perhaps, reasonably comic, +but the slightest irony of circumstance makes it so. A very little of +the mockery of conditions brings out all the latent absurdity of the +"sixieme et septieme arron-dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So +is it with the mere "domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the +burlesque of life, the suit at law to "reintegrer le domicile conjugal" +becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "a domicile" +merely--the word of every shopman--is, in the unconscious mouths of the +speakers, always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an +Englishman hears it; so is the advice of the police that you shall +"circuler" in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you shall +not, in the churches. + +So are the serious and ordinary phrases, "maison nuptiale," "maison +mortuaire," and the still more serious "repos dominical," "oraison +dominicale." There is no majesty in such words. The unsuspicious +gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at, +the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to the +credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, through +this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand authors of +comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar thing, and compels +that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. _Us_, above all, by virtue of +the custom of counterchange here set forth. + +Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the English +poets that so persist in France may not reveal something within the +English language--one would be somewhat loth to think so--reserved to the +French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, Edgar Poe to the +select? Then would some of the mysteries of French reading of English be +explained otherwise than by the plainer explanation that has hitherto +satisfied our haughty curiosity. The taste for rhetoric seemed to +account for Byron, and the desire of the rhetorician to claim a taste for +poetry seemed to account for Poe. But, after all, _patatras_! Who can +say? + + + + +HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO + + +The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell with +him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for English +drama. That manner of man--Arlecchino, or Harlequin--had outlived his +playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. A little of +Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father of the Shrew, +but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate Tranio +in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than the +smouldering of the old man. Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy +and comedy of Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his lightest, his +brightest, his most vital shape. + +Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the busybody, +the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, the mercurial +one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of Moliere. He is officious +and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille and Ergaste and Scapin; but he +tends to be a lacquey, with a reference rather to Antiquity and the Latin +comedy than to the Middle Ages, as on the English stage his mere memory +survives differently to a later age in the person of "Charles, his +friend." What convinces me that he virtually died with Mercutio is +chiefly this--that this comrade of Romeo's lives so keenly as to be fully +capable of the death that he takes at Tybalt's sword-point; he lived +indeed, he dies indeed. Another thing that marks the close of a career +of ages is his loss of his long customary good luck. Who ever heard of +Arlecchino unfortunate before, at fault with his sword-play, overtaken by +tragedy? His time had surely come. The gay companion was to bleed; +Tybalt's sword had made a way. 'Twas not so deep as a well nor so wide +as a church-door, but it served. + +Some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the primitive +Italian play, because Harlequin, on that conventional little stage of the +past, has a hero's place, whereas when he interferes in human affairs he +is only the auxiliary. He might be lover and bridegroom on the primitive +stage, in the comedy of these few and unaltered types; but when +Pantaloon, Clown, and Harlequin play with really human beings, then +Harlequin can be no more than a friend of the hero, the friend of the +bridegroom. The five figures of the old stage dance attendance; they +play around the business of those who have the dignity of mortality; +they, poor immortals--a clown who does not die, a pantaloon never far +from death, who yet does not die, a Columbine who never attains +Desdemona's death of innocence or Juliet's death of rectitude and +passion--flit in the backward places of the stage. + +Ariel fulfils his office, and is not of one kind with those he serves. Is +there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? Something of the +subservient immortality, of the light indignity, proper to Pantaleone, +Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the Clown, hovers away from the +stage when Ariel is released from the trouble of human things. + +Immortality, did I say? It was immortality until Mercutio fell. And if +some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has transformed so many +scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand children, since Mercutio +died, I must reply that our modern Harlequin is no more than a +_marionnette_; he has returned whence he came. A man may play him, but +he is--as he was first of all--a doll. From doll-hood Arlecchino took +life, and, so promoted, flitted through a thousand comedies, only to be +again what he first was; save that, as once a doll played the man, so now +a man plays the doll. It is but a memory of Arlecchino that our children +see, a poor statue or image endowed with mobility rather than with life. + +With Mercutio, vanished the light heart that had given to the serious +ages of the world an hour's refuge from the unforgotten burden of +responsible conscience; the light heart assumed, borrowed, made +dramatically the spectator's own. We are not serious now, and no heart +now is quite light, even for an hour. + + + + +LAUGHTER + + +Times have been, it is said, merrier than these; but it is certain +nevertheless that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not for +the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere the joke +"emerges"--as an "elegant" writer might have it--emerges to catch the +attention of the sense of humour; and everywhere the sense of humour +wanders, watches, and waits to honour the appeal. + +It loiters, vaguely but perpetually willing. It wears (let the violent +personification be pardoned) a hanging lip, and a wrinkle in abeyance, +and an eye in suspense. It is much at the service of the vagrant +encounterer, and may be accosted by any chance daughters of the game. It +stands in untoward places, or places that were once inappropriate, and is +early at some indefinite appointment, some ubiquitous tryst, with the +compliant jest. + +All literature becomes a field of easy assignations; there is a constant +signalling, an endless recognition. Forms of approach are remitted. And +the joke and the sense of humour, with no surprise of meeting, or no +gaiety of strangeness, so customary has the promiscuity become, go up and +down the pages of the paper and the book. See, again, the theatre. A +somewhat easy sort of comic acting is by so much the best thing upon our +present stage that little else can claim--paradox again apart--to be +taken seriously. + +There is, in a word, a determination, an increasing tendency away from +the Oriental estimate of laughter as a thing fitter for women, fittest +for children, and unfitted for the beard. Laughter is everywhere and at +every moment proclaimed to be the honourable occupation of men, and in +some degree distinctive of men, and no mean part of their prerogative and +privilege. The sense of humour is chiefly theirs, and those who are not +men are to be admitted to the jest upon their explanation. They will not +refuse explanation. And there is little upon which a man will so value +himself as upon that sense, "in England, now." + +Meanwhile, it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like +rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit when it +is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we must confess +that we laugh oftenest because--being amused--we intend to show that we +are amused. We are right to make the sign, but a smile would be as sure +a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; it would but be changing the +convention; and the change would restore laughter itself to its own +place. We have fallen into the way of using it to prove something--our +sense of the goodness of the jest, to wit; but laughter should not thus +be used, it should go free. It is not a demonstration, whether in logic, +or--as the word demonstration is now generally used--in emotion; and we +do ill to charge it with that office. + +Something of the Oriental idea of dignity might not be amiss among such a +people as ourselves containing wide and numerous classes who laugh +without cause: audiences; crowds; a great many clergymen, who perhaps +first fell into the habit in the intention of proving that they were not +gloomy; but a vast number of laymen also who had not that excuse; and +many women who laugh in their uncertainty as to what is humorous and what +is not. This last is the most harmless of all kinds of superfluous +laughter. When it carries an apology, a confession of natural and genial +ignorance, and when a gentle creature laughs a laugh of hazard and +experiment, she is to be more than forgiven. What she must not do is to +laugh a laugh of instruction, and as it were retrieve the jest that was +never worth the taking. + +There are, besides, a few women who do not disturb themselves as to a +sense of humour, but who laugh from a sense of happiness. Childish is +that trick, and sweet. For children, who always laugh because they must, +and never by way of proof or sign, laugh only half their laughs out of +their sense of humour; they laugh the rest under a mere stimulation: +because of abounding breath and blood; because some one runs behind them, +for example, and movement does so jog their spirits that their legs fail +them, for laughter, without a jest. + +If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to signal +their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall keep the laugh +for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, and simply, and not +thrice at the same thing--once for foolish surprise, and twice for tardy +intelligence, and thrice to let it be known that they are amused--then it +may be time to persuade this laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it +is wont in public. The theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations +laugh lower than ours. The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the +laugher's sense of the ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the +disadvantage of covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the +actors. It is a public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for +a public laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private +laughter there. + +Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times of +dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour in a +place better guarded, as something worth a measure of seclusion. It +should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in adventurous places. +For the sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself +conspicuous in the act of laughter. It has negative tasks of valid +virtue; for example, the standing and waiting within call of tragedy +itself, where, excluded, it may keep guard. + +No reasonable man will aver that the Oriental manners are best. This +would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where the wit "out- +did the meat, out-did the frolic wine," and to deny Ben Jonson's "tart +Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus," and the rest. Doubtless +Greece determined the custom for all our Occident; but none the less +might the modern world grow more sensible of the value of composure. + +To none other of the several powers of our souls do we so give rein as to +this of humour, and none other do we indulge with so little +fastidiousness. It is as though there were honour in governing the other +senses, and honour in refusing to govern this. It is as though we were +ashamed of reason here, and shy of dignity, and suspicious of temperance, +and diffident of moderation, and too eager to thrust forward that which +loses nothing by seclusion. + + + + +THE RHYTHM OF LIFE + + +If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity +rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the +orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, +velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the +recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it +does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. +Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the +mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods +towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards +recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday, and will be +intolerable to-morrow; to-day it is easy to bear, but the cause has not +passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to +leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse itself does not +remain--it returns. Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made +a course of notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and +would have had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such +observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, there +have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles. But +Thomas a Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not measure them. In +his cell alone with the elements--"What wouldst thou more than these? for +out of these were all things made"--he learnt the stay to be found in the +depth of the hour of bitterness, and the remembrance that restrains the +soul at the coming of the moment of delight, giving it a more conscious +welcome, but presaging for it an inexorable flight. And "rarely, rarely +comest thou," sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of +Delight. Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to +our service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial +violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus +compelled. _That_ flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or +hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what trysts with Time. + +It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the "Imitation" should both +have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, and to guess +at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close touch with +the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate human rules, no +infractions of the liberty and law of the universal movement, kept from +them the knowledge of recurrences. _Eppur si muove_. They knew that +presence does not exist without absence; they knew that what is just upon +its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return. They knew +that what is approaching to the very touch is hastening towards +departure. "O wind," cried Shelley, in autumn, + + O wind, + If winter comes can spring be far behind? + +They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with +unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and +retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts +after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, +or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live +without either rest or full activity. The souls of certain of the +saints, being singularly simple and single, have been in the most +complete subjection to the law of periodicity. Ecstasy and desolation +visited them by seasons. They endured, during spaces of vacant time, the +interior loss of all for which they had sacrificed the world. They +rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness alighting in their +hearts. Like them are the poets whom, three times or ten times in the +course of a long life, the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken. +And yet hardly like them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared +for the departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few +poets have fully recognized the metrical absence of their muse. For full +recognition is expressed in one only way--silence. + +It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship +the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes are +known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her depend the tides; and +she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that recurrently +irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than any other companion of +earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages knew her by +that name. Her metrical phases are the symbol of the order of +recurrence. Constancy in approach and in departure is the reason of her +inconstancies. Juliet will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the +moon; but Juliet did not live to know that love itself has tidal +times--lapses and ebbs which are due to the metrical rule of the interior +heart, but which the lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward +alteration in the beloved. For man--except those elect already named--is +hardly aware of periodicity. The individual man either never learns it +fully, or learns it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a +matter of cumulative experience upon which cumulative evidence is long +lacking. It is in the after-part of each life that the law is learnt so +definitely as to do away with the hope or fear of continuance. That +young sorrow comes so near to despair is a result of this young +ignorance. So is the early hope of great achievement. Life seems so +long, and its capacity so great, to one who knows nothing of all the +intervals it needs must hold--intervals between aspirations, between +actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses of sleep. And life looks +impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware of the inevitable and +unfailing refreshment. It would be for their peace to learn that there +is a tide in the affairs of men, in a sense more subtle--if it is not too +audacious to add a meaning to Shakespeare--than the phrase was meant to +contain. Their joy is flying away from them on its way home; their life +will wax and wane; and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in +its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all +things--a sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity. + + + + +DOMUS ANGUSTA + + +The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for its +slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but their +complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, of the human +lot. A disproportion--all in favour of man--between man and his destiny +is one of the things to be taken for granted in literature: so frequent +and so easy is the utterance of the habitual lamentation as to the +trouble of a "vain capacity," so well explained has it ever been. + + Thou hast not half the power to do me harm + That I have to be hurt, + +discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the brave +Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow house. +Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution is there, little +argument or definition, little explicitness. And yet for every vain +capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain destinies, for every +liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. It is the trouble of the wide +house we hear of, clamorous of its disappointments and desires. The +narrow house has no echoes; yet its pathetic shortcoming might well move +pity. On that strait stage is acted a generous tragedy; to that +inadequate soul is intrusted an enormous sorrow; a tempest of movement +makes its home within that slender nature; and heroic happiness seeks +that timorous heart. + +We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its +inarticulateness--not, certainly, its fewness of words, but its +inadequacy and imprecision of speech. For, doubtless, right language +enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. Who, for +instance, but trusts more nobly for knowing the full word of his +confidence? Who but loves more penetratingly for possessing the ultimate +syllable of his tenderness? There is a "pledging of the word," in +another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and promise. The poet +pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and finds therein a peculiar +sanction. And I suppose that even physical pain takes on an edge when it +not only enforces a pang but whispers a phrase. Consciousness and the +word are almost as closely united as thought and the word. Almost--not +quite; in spite of its inexpressive speech, the narrow house is aware and +sensitive beyond, as it were, its poor power. + +But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, we know +it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; love is +great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic virtue; and +to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, submissive in the +indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the vulgar, secret in the +familiar. It is destructive, because it not only closes but contradicts +life. Unlikely people die. The one certain thing, it is also the one +improbable. A dreadful paradox is perhaps wrought upon a little nature +that is incapable of death and yet is constrained to die. That is a true +destruction, and the thought of it is obscure. + +Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal pause. +It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical conclusion. Mrs. +Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. Considering her mental powers, +by the way, an illogical conclusion for her would be manifestly +inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having seen a life whole, sees it to +an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the +audacity that, having kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the +grotesque man in literature is immortal, and with something more +significant than the immortality awarded to him in the sayings of +rhetoric; he is perdurable because he is not completed. His humours are +strangely matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; +for there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be +mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I thank +my fellow mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke that the +French so pleasantly call _une joyeusete_; these are to smile at. But +the gay injustice of laughter is between me and the man or woman in a +book, in fiction, or on the stage in a play. + +That narrow house--there is sometimes a message from its living windows. +Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by moments from eyes +that are apt to express none but common things. There are allusions +unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief glances. Far from me and +from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks in reply to pain +of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive and to hurt the foolish +and the stolid--"wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?" + + + + +INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE + + +I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words in +union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union in the +art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are for each +poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to take the +cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in place of the +virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly consent to take them +for ordering even the most habitual of daily affairs--is to forgo +Innocence and Experience at once and together. Obviously, Experience can +be nothing except personal and separate; and Innocence of a singularly +solitary quality is his who does not dip his hands into other men's +histories, and does not give to his own word the common sanction of other +men's summaries and conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and +Experience in one, and take them as a sign of the necessary and noble +isolation of man from man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to +forgo that manner of personal separateness, and to use the things of +others, I think I would rather appropriate their future than their past. +Let me put on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must +borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified +ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my memory +with an unjustifiable history. + +And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love-poetry +consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no reluctance in +adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom they have not even +been introduced. Their verse is full of ready-made memories, various, +numerous, and cruel. No single life--supposing it to be a liberal life +concerned with something besides sex--could quite suffice for so much +experience, so much disillusion, so much _deception_. To achieve that +tone in its fullness it is necessary to take for one's own the +_praeterita_ (say) of Alfred de Musset and of the men who helped him--not +to live but--to have lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than +any man lives, and to make a common hoard of erotic remembrances with all +kinds of poets. + +As the Franciscans wear each other's old habits, and one friar goes about +darned because of another's rending, so the poet of a certain order grows +cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not otherwise will the +resultant verse succeed in implying so much--or rather so many, in the +feminine plural. The man of very sensitive individuality might hesitate +at the adoption. The Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness +and to overcome it. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather to +make use of one's fellow men's old shoes than put their old secrets to +use, and dress one's art in a motley of past passions. Moreover, to +utilize the mental experience of many is inevitably to use their verse +and phrase. For the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are +familiar enough. One of them is the absence of the word of promise and +pledge, the loss of the earliest and simplest of the impulses of love: +which is the vow. "Till death!" "For ever!" are cries too simple and +too natural to be commonplace, and in their denial there is the least +tolerable of banalities--that of other men's disillusions. + +Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature a +delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of assumption, +of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose love-poetry were +thus true, and whose _pudeur_ of personality thus simple and inviolate. +This is the private man, in other words the gentleman, who will neither +love nor remember in common. + + + + +THE HOURS OF SLEEP + + +There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None the less are +they his by some state within the mind, which answers rhythmically and +punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, without drowsiness, without +languor, and without gloom, the night mind of man is yet not his day +mind; he has night-powers of feeling which are at their highest in +dreams, but are night's as well as sleep's. The powers of the mind in +dreams, which are inexplicable, are not altogether baffled because the +mind is awake; it is the hour of their return as it is the hour of a +tide's, and they do return. + +In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to hamper her +influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the nerves of the +sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of anger and love, +contempt and terror to which not only can no event of the real day +persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not even the capacity. +This increase of capacity, which is the dream's, is punctual to the +night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at arm's length. + +The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and their +dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he puts off +his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the other state, +by day. "I shall be able to bear this when I am grown up" is not oftener +in a young child's mind than "I shall endure to think of it in the day- +time." By this he confesses the double habit and double experience, not +to be interchanged, and communicating together only by memory and hope. + +Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night is to +miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might imagine the +rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to the time, and +tempering the extremities of either state by messages of remembrance and +expectancy. + +Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any delirium, +would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less would be the loss +of him who had not exercised his waking thought under the influence of +the hours claimed by dreams. And as to choosing between day and night, +or guessing whether the state of day or dark is the truer and the more +natural, he would be rash who should make too sure. + +In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. +That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to lose +the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The hours of sleep +are too much altered when they are filled by lights and crowds; and +Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, as when the +larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs and sing +daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature is easily +deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray as to the +hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid so much noise and +among so many people that you shall not be aware of them; you may thus +merely force and prolong the day. But to do so is not to live well both +lives; it is not to yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to +be cradled in the swing of change. + +There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such a +cradle of alternate hours. "It cannot be," says Herbert, "that I am he +on whom Thy tempests fell all night." + +It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, has +the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines in English +poetry--lines that cast sunrise shadows--are those of Blake, written +confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow and dreams, and +those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; all is as dark as he +can make it with the "bags of soot"; but the boy's dream of the green +plain and the river is too bright for day. So, indeed, is another +brightness of Blake's, which is also, in his poem, a child's dream, and +was certainly conceived by him in the hours of sleep, in which he woke to +write the Songs of Innocence:- + + O what land is the land of dreams? + What are its mountains, and what are its streams? + O father, I saw my mother there, + Among the lilies by waters fair. + Among the lambs clothed in white, + She walk'd with her Thomas in sweet delight. + +To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision. + +Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. In some +landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, and it +was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and dreams +claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an illumination. +Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in summer so many of +the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He carries the mood of man's +night out into the sunshine--Corot did so--and lives the life of night, +in all its genius, in the presence of a risen sun. In the only time when +the heart can dream of light, in the night of visions, with the rhythmic +power of night at its dark noon in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of +the actual sun. + +He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. To that +life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other kinds of +beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the extreme +perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the explanation of +all the memories of dreams recalled by these visionary paintings, done in +earlier years than were those, better known, that are the Corots of all +the world. Every man who knows what it is to dream of landscape meets +with one of these works of Corot's first manner with a cry, not of +welcome only, but of recognition. Here is morning perceived by the +spirit of the hours of sleep. + + + + +SOLITUDE + + +The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom civilization +has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom civilization has +given little but its reaction, its rebound, its chips, its refuse, its +shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to them solitude is a right +foregone or a luxury unattained; a right foregone, we may name it, in the +case of the nearly savage, and a luxury unattained in the case of the +nearly refined. These has the movement of the world thronged together +into some blind by-way. + +Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, and +virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, unclaimed. +They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their kingdoms they are +ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have not guessed that they own +for every man a space inviolate, a place of unhidden liberty and of no +obscure enfranchisement. They do not claim even the solitude of closed +corners, the narrow privacy of the lock and key; nor could they command +so much. For the solitude that has a sky and a horizon they know not how +to wish. + +It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the woods, +and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be measured by +miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are freshly and freely the +dominion of every man for the day of his possession. There is loneliness +for innumerable solitaries. As many days as there are in all the ages, +so many solitudes are there for men. This is the open house of the +earth; no one is refused. Nor is the space shortened or the silence +marred because, one by one, men in multitudes have been alone there +before. Solitude is separate experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be +numbered by days, but by men themselves. Every man of the living and +every man of the dead might have had his "privacy of light." + +It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; and a +thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult to get for +a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude be enclosed, it +is still an open solitude, so there be "no cloister for the eyes," and a +space of far country or a cloud in the sky be privy to your hiding-place. +But the best solitude does not hide at all. + +This the people who have drifted together into the streets live whole +lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation of even the +solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never have a whole hour +alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent companionship, as people +may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical choice, familiar with one another +and not intimate. They live under careless observation and subject to a +vagabond curiosity. Theirs is the involuntary and perhaps the +unconscious loss which is futile and barren. + +One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or the +hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, visible, +without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication and practice of +action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or futile loss, and +they have a conviction, and they bestow the conviction, of solitude +deferred. + +Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone and +inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in many a +drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. The girl +stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the sun for the +closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as she looks, out of +sight. + +Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural solitude of +a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed and talked about, +handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, and there is so much +importunate service going forward, that a woman is hardly alone long +enough to become aware, in recollection, how her own blood moves +separately, beside her, with another rhythm and different pulses. All is +commonplace until the doors are closed upon the two. This unique +intimacy is a profound retreat, an absolute seclusion. It is more than +single solitude; it is a redoubled isolation more remote than mountains, +safer than valleys, deeper than forests, and further than mid-sea. + +That solitude partaken--the only partaken solitude in the world--is the +Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and a betrayal +of that confidence might well be held to be the least pardonable of all +crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a +woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a +child's foot runs. But the favourite crime of the sentimentalist is that +of a woman against her child. Her power, her intimacy, her opportunity, +that should be her accusers, are held to excuse her. She gains the most +slovenly of indulgences and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar +grounds that her crime was easy. + +Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by the +way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from common +opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the situation. He +was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was his secret, and the +public was not privy to his artistic conscience. He does violence to the +obligations of which he is aware, and which the world does not know very +explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he is lawless in a more literal +sense, but only hopes the world will believe that he has a whole code of +his own making. It would, nevertheless, be less unworthy to break +obvious rules obviously in the obvious face of the public, and to abide +the common rebuke. + +It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and wide +and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial of the +accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace or so aside, +is enough to lead thither. + +A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very sincerely. In +order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep the published +promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover of long seclusion +or of a very life of loneliness. He should have gained the state of +solitariness which is a condition of life quite unlike any other. The +traveller who may have gone astray in countries where an almost life-long +solitude is possible knows how invincibly apart are the lonely figures he +has seen in desert places there. Their loneliness is broken by his +passage, it is true, but hardly so to them. They look at him, but they +are not aware that he looks at them. Nay, they look at him as though +they were invisible. Their un-self-consciousness is absolute; it is in +the wild degree. They are solitaries, body and soul; even when they are +curious, and turn to watch the passer-by, they are essentially alone. +Now, no one ever found that attitude in a squire's figure, or that look +in any country gentleman's eyes. The squire is not a life-long solitary. +He never bore himself as though he were invisible. He never had the +impersonal ways of a herdsman in the remoter Apennines, with a blind, +blank hut in the rocks for his dwelling. Millet would not even have +taken him as a model for a solitary in the briefer and milder sylvan +solitudes of France. And yet nothing but a life-long, habitual, and wild +solitariness would be quite proportionate to a park of any magnitude. + +If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so +there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. It +is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris expression. It is +the quickly caught, though not interested, look, the dull but ready +glance of those who do not know of their forfeited place apart; who have +neither the open secret nor the close; no reserve, no need of refuge, no +flight nor impulse of flight; no moods but what they may brave out in the +street, no hope of news from solitary counsels. + + + + +DECIVILIZED + + +The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with +decivilized man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity--sparing +him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge of +barbarism. Especially from new soil--remote, colonial--he faces you, +bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded of his own +youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches and +canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature and +to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. He +is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless +slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The +new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does +but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse +feeling of a race decivilizing. He who played long this pattering part +of youth, hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he did not +wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult to +communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder than a +second-hand (figurative) dress coat. And when it was a question not of +rebuke, but of praise, even the American was ill-content with the word of +the judicious who lauded him for some delicate successes in continuing +something of the literature of England, something of the art of France; +he was more eager for the applause that stimulated him to write poems in +prose form and to paint panoramic landscape, after brief training in +academies of native inspiration. Even now English voices are constantly +calling upon America to begin--to begin, for the world is expectant. +Whereas there is no beginning for her, but instead a fine and admirable +continuity which only a constant care can guide into sustained advance. + +But decivilized man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, too, +knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a literature, an +art, a music, all his own--derived from many and various things of price. +Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity and cheapness, is impossible +without a beautiful past. Its chief characteristic--which is futility, +not failure--could not be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory +reproduction, the quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, +especially the utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic +quality, purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the +antecedents of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of +them. And nothing can be much sadder that such a proof of what may +possibly be the failure of derivation. + +Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of time, +we may, indeed choose backwards. We may give our thoughts noble +forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; they shall be +also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our inheritance, and not +our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our minds may trace upwards and +follow their ways to the best well-heads of the arts. The very habit of +our thoughts may be persuaded one way unawares by their antenatal +history. Their companions must be lovely, but need be no lovelier than +their ancestors; and being so fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may +be intrusted to keep the counsels of literature. + +Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel which of +us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers of subsequent +depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the contemporary +tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who +shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when +and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilized have every grace as the +antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of +their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or +laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by +some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilized to blame as having +in their own persons possessed civilization and marred it. They did not +possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an +inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can hardly +do other than continue. + +Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and +multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because they are many; +but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what dullness in +their future! To the eye that has reluctantly discovered this truth--that +the vulgarized are not _un_-civilized, and that there is no growth for +them--it does not look like a future at all. More ballad-concerts, more +quaint English, more robustious barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, +more colonial poetry, more young nations with withered traditions. Yet +it is before this prospect that the provincial overseas lifts up his +voice in a boast or a promise common enough among the incapable young, +but pardonable only in senility. He promises the world a literature, an +art, that shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just +built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain words were +dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful and pitiable +as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them when they are +the promise of an impotent people? "I will do such things: what they are +yet I know not." + + + + +THE SPIRIT OF PLACE + + +With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have +all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too much +interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible +utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, +is a musician pestered with literature. + +To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake together +a nightingale's notes, or strike or drive them into haste, nor can you +make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your turn, whereas +wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere movement and hustling. I +have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole +peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made +light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance +in his boots by a merry highwayman. + +The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, +and the chimes await their appointed time to fly--wild prisoners--by twos +or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives--one or twelve taking +wing--they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; they are delivered +from the close hands of this actual present. Not in vain is the sudden +upper door opened against the sky; they are away, hours of the past. + +Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most surely +after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of France when one +has arrived by night; they are no more to be forgotten than the bells in +"Parsifal." They mingle with the sound of feet in unknown streets, they +are the voices of an unknown tower; they are loud in their own language. +The spirit of place, which is to be seen in the shapes of the fields and +the manner of the crops, to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the +breath of the earth, overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of +some black-smith, calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks +its local tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and +greatly by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you know +how familiar, how childlike, how life-long it is in the ears of the +people. The bells are strange, and you know how homely they must be. +Their utterances are, as it were, the classics of a dialect. + +Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and +where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides +entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, +its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, having been perceived a week, +and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The +untravelled spirit of place--not to be pursued, for it never flies, but +always to be discovered, never absent, without variation--lurks in the by- +ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. +It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and +nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long +white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give +promise not of its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular and +unforeseen goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be +made. Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay such a +visit? And if by good fortune it is a child who is the pilgrim, the +spirit of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for antiquity and the +conceiver of antiquity (who is only a child) know one another; nor is +there a more delicate perceiver of locality than a child. He is well +used to words and voices that he does not understand, and this is a +condition of his simplicity; and when those unknown words are bells, loud +in the night, they are to him as homely and as old as lullabies. + +If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in gay +measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a +wedding--bells that would step to quite another and a less agile march +with a better grace--there are belfries that hold far sweeter companies. +If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a most curious +local immemorial music in many a campanile on the heights. Their way is +for the ringers to play a tune on the festivals, and the tunes are not +hymn tunes or popular melodies, but proper bell-tunes, made for bells. +Doubtless they were made in times better versed than ours in the +sub-divisions of the arts, and better able to understand the strength +that lies ready in the mere little submission to the means of a little +art, and to the limits--nay, the very embarrassments--of those means. If +it were but possible to give here a real bell-tune--which cannot be, for +those melodies are rather long--the reader would understand how some +village musician of the past used his narrow means as a composer for the +bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, fancy, and what +effect of liberty. + +These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. The +belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the time +when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, needless to say, +this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. At that time they must +have had foundries for bells of tender voices, and pure, warm, light, and +golden throats, precisely tuned. The hounds of Theseus had not a more +just scale, tuned in a peal, than a North Italian belfry holds in leash. +But it does not send them out in a mere scale, it touches them in the +order of the game of a charming melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by +man this is by far the most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the +great churches. Giotto's coloured tower in Florence, that carries the +bells for Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's silent dome, does not +ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, depth, and +dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly fills the country. + +The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can therefore +hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no other bells in +earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly set open to the cloud, +on a _festa_ morning, to let fly those soft-voiced flocks, but the +nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our local tune is +uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, secluded, sequestered +art of composing melodies for bells--charming division of an art, having +its own ends and means, and keeping its own wings for unfolding by +law--dwells in these solitary places. No tunes in a town would get this +hearing, or would be made clear to the end of their frolic amid such a +wide and lofty silence. + +Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; the +custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the nervous tourist +complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact he is made to hear +an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous tourist has not, +perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of place does not signal to +him to go and find it among innumerable hills, where one by one, one by +one, the belfries stand and play their tunes. Variable are those lonely +melodies, having a differing gaiety for the festivals; and a pitiful air +is played for the burial of a villager. + +As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten when +the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in thought to +earth's untethered sounds. This is Milton's curfew, that sways across +one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry--"the wide-watered." + + + + +POPULAR BURLESQUE + + +The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the +motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets with +the sound of processionals and of recessionals--a certain popular version +of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I hear the cries of +derision raised by the makers of this likeness of something unworshipful +on the earth beneath, so much the more am I convinced that the national +humour is that of banter, and that no other kind of mirth so gains as +does this upon the public taste. + +Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that day is +as the people will actually have it, with their own invention, their own +material, their own means, and their own spirit. They owe nothing on +this occasion to the promptings or the subscriptions of the classes that +are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people +in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the +people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer +the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some +creature of their hands. + +It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is capable +of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. To make a +mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or conceived in the +mind, being an industrious custom of children and childish people which +lapses in the age of much idle reading, the making of a material image is +the still more diligent and more sedulous act, whereby the primitive man +controls and caresses his own fancy. He may take arms anon, +disappointed, against his own work; but did he ever do that work in +malice from the outset? + +From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person of the +guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen's idea of something +admirable which he might carry in procession on some other day, the +carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would hoot at a +suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a good-looking +doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image-making art in the +practice of our people, except only this art of rags and contumely. Or, +again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were that of anger for a certain +cause, the destruction would not be the work of so thin an annual malice +and of so heartless a rancour. + +But the single motive is that popular irony which becomes daily--or so it +seems--more and more the holiday temper of the majority. Mockery is the +only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the only intelligence. +They make an image of some one in whom they do not believe, to deride it. +Say that the guy is the effigy of an agitator in the cause of something +to be desired; the street man and boy have then two motives of mocking: +they think the reform to be not worth doing, and they are willing to +suspect the reformer of some kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this +occasion is most characteristic of all guys in London. The people, +having him or her to deride, do not even wait for the opportunity of +their annual procession. They anticipate time, and make an image when it +is not November, and sell it at the market of the kerb. + +Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the citizens, +perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. These, +too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. They are, +indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all--this it is that +makes the _succes fou_ (and here Paris is of one mind with London) of +the street; but short of such a triumph, and when a meaning is +discernible, it is an irony. + +Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) seems +to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is the strangest +thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most mocking in the +exchange. If the burlesque of the maid's tongue is provocative, that of +the man's is derisive. Somewhat of the order of things as they stood +before they were inverted seems to remain, nevertheless, as a memory; +nay, to give the inversion a kind of lagging interest. Irony is made +more complete by the remembrance, and by an implicit allusion to the +state of courtship in other classes, countries, or times. Such an +allusion no doubt gives all its peculiar twang to the burlesque of love. + +With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their millions +undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who are their +mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure sense their +suitors, and in a strolling manner, with one knows not what ungainly +motive of reserve, even their admirers. Nor from their tongues only; +for, to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys the girl; and if he wears +her hat, it is ten to one that he has plucked it off with a humorous +disregard of her dreadful pins. + +We have to believe that unmocked love has existence in the streets, +because of the proof that is published when a man shoots a woman who has +rejected him; and from this also do we learn to believe that a woman of +the burlesque classes is able to reject. But for that sign we should +find little or nothing intelligible in what we see or overhear of the +drama of love in popular life. + +In its easy moments, in its leisure, at holiday time, it baffles all +tradition, and shows us the spirit of comedy clowning after a fashion +that is insular and not merely civic. You hear the same twang in country +places; and whether the English maid, having, like the antique, thrown +her apple at her shepherd, run into the thickets of Hampstead Heath or +among sylvan trees, it seems that the most humorous thing to be done by +the swain would be, in the opinion in vogue, to stroll another way. +Insular I have said, because I have not seen the like of this fashion +whether in America or elsewhere in Europe. + +But the chief inversion of all, proved summarily by the annual inversion +of the worship of images on the fifth of November, is that of a sentence +of Wordsworth's--"We live by admiration." + + + + +HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT + + +Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of communication +with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the interior act most gentle; +there may be a tacit apology, and a profound misgiving unexpressed; a +reluctance not only to refuse but to be arbiter; a dislike of the office; +a regret, whether for the unequal distribution of social luck or for a +purse left at home, equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts no word or +sign, nothing whatever of intercourse. If a dog or a cat accosts you, or +a calf in a field comes close to you with a candid infant face and +breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind of animal comes to +you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, you acknowledge it. But +the beggar to whom you give nothing expects no answer to a question, no +recognition of his presence, not so much as the turn of your eyelid in +his direction, and never a word to excuse you. + +Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer to the +beggar's remark than to leave a shop without "Good morning." When +complaint is made of the modern social manner--that it has no merit but +what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain from courtesy with +more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely requires--the habit of +manner towards beggars is probably not so much as thought of. To the +simply human eye, however, the prevalent manner towards beggars is a +striking thing; it is significant of so much. + +Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the intelligible +act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity that marks the caste +answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, in Italy, for example. An +elderly Italian lady on her slow way from her own ancient ancestral +_palazzo_ to the village, and accustomed to meet, empty-handed, a certain +number of beggars, answers them by a retort which would be, literally +translated, "Excuse me, dear; I, too, am a poor devil," and the last word +she naturally puts into the feminine. + +Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect--a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal terms as +nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present the phrase to +English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. The excellent woman +who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, and raises no smile. +It is only in another climate, and amid other manners, that one cannot +recall it without a smile. To a mind having a lively sense of contrast +it is not a little pleasant to imagine an elderly lady of corresponding +station in England replying so to importunities for alms; albeit we have +nothing answering to the good fellowship of a broad patois used currently +by rich and poor, and yet slightly grotesque in the case of all +speakers--a dialect in which, for example, no sermon is ever preached, +and in which no book is ever printed, except for fun; a dialect +"familiar, but by no means vulgar." Besides, even if our Englishwoman +could by any possibility bring herself to say to a mendicant, "Excuse me, +dear; I, too, am a poor devil," she would still not have the opportunity +of putting the last word punctually into the feminine, which does so +complete the character of the sentence. + +The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase of +excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And everywhere in +the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who suddenly begins to +beg from you when you least expected it, calls you "my daughter," you can +hardly reply without kindness. Where the tourist is thoroughly well +known, doubtless the company of beggars are used to savage manners in the +rich; but about the byways and remoter places there must still be some +dismay at the anger, the silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive +haughtiness wherewith the opportunity of alms-giving is received by +travellers. + +In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so emphatically +as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so manifestly put +themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant to see them there; +but silence or a storm of impersonal protest--a protest that appeals +vaguely less to the beggars than to some not impossible police--does not +seem the most appropriate manner of rebuking them. We have, it may be, a +scruple on the point of human dignity, compromised by the entreaty and +the thanks of the mendicant; but we have a strange way of vindicating +that dignity when we refuse to man, woman, or child the recognition of a +simply human word. Nay, our offence is much the greater of the two. It +is not merely a rough and contemptuous intercourse, it is the refusal of +intercourse--the last outrage. How do we propose to redress those +conditions of life that annoy us when a brother whines, if we deny the +presence, the voice, and the being of this brother, and if, because +fortune has refused him money, we refuse him existence? + +We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold it in +the indifference of the wise. "Have patience, little saint," is a phrase +that might teach us the cheerful way to endure our own unintelligible +fortunes in the midst, say, of the population of a hill-village among the +most barren of the Maritime Alps, where huts of stone stand among the +stones of an unclothed earth, and there is no sign of daily bread. The +people, albeit unused to travellers, yet know by instinct what to do, and +beg without the delay of a moment as soon as they see your unwonted +figure. Let it be taken for granted that you give all you can; some form +of refusal becomes necessary at last, and the gentlest--it is worth while +to remember--is the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the +portent of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that +of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made +to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, +uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, +thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to +the violence of the rich. + +It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If a beggar is +still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer and comfort us +to see; he practises not merely the conventional seeming, which is hardly +intended to convince, but a more subtle and dramatic kind of semblance, +of no good influence upon the morals of the road. He no longer trusts +the world with a sight of his gaiety. He is not a wholehearted +mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty of unstable balance whereby +an unattached creature can go in a new direction with a new wind. The +merry beggar was the only adventurer free to yield to the lighter touches +of chance, the touches that a habit of resistance has made imperceptible +to the seated and stable social world. + +The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, by +tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has been +stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, led +underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys of the song of +the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to capture, have +ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world's ears. But it seems +that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy beggar is still the +subject of a Spanish song. + +That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw's or a robber's, it is +not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling note of a man +who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill-fortune, but takes +it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand of +unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own choice of bonds, +but has not broken his own by force. It seems, therefore, the song of an +indomitable liberty of movement, light enough for the puffs of a zephyr +chance. + + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross it, +unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of the +monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see more than +beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her in guest-house +and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin--the first of the +dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, and +backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings in a +cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is this, and +these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, sharper, and +loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. Just such a +Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot of its final +crucifix you can see the sunrise touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the +encircled lake below is cool with the last of the night. The same order +of friars keep that sub-Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the +Kreuzberg beyond Bonn with the same steep path by the same fourteen +chapels, facing the Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green over +the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing of +smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and languidly +cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; +the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and +lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and +the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady +ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining +people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages +are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates +have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon +their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more +than half the colour--over all the chocolate and all the blue--with which +the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, +simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine +and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense--it is +modern; and the friars look young in another--they are like their +brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists of +yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or "old +world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be by the +excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers work +upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous bee- +farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is gaily hanging +the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and a machine which +slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the yard thereby is +guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the +obscure impulses of a dog's heart--atoned for by long and self-conscious +remorse--he bit the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make +doggerel of him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on +monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among +the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other +valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at +them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl +that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place +with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome +to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth +pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian +saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and +between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries +continually since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her +the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited as to +show the world that their life was aloof from its "idle business." By +some such phrase, at least, the friar would assuredly have attempted to +include her in any spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have +asked of her the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the +Salvation Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making +such a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran's +ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As a pocket +it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the local white wine +made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this house by the West, is +carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger at the gates. The +friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and +not only to make, but also to toss them. Those who chanced to be in the +room stood prudently aside, and the brother tossed boldly. But that was +the last that was seen of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in _La +Legende des Siecles_ of disappearance as the thing which no creature +is able to achieve: here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by +quite an ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was +an end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up +gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy +or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found +but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome +the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the +habit of sacrificing sleep. What art, what literature, or what life but +would gain a secret security by such a point of perpetual freshness and +perpetual initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a +will that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of the +French fields, and the hour of night--_l'ora di notte_--which rings +with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the Adriatic +littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the prayer for the +dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work of +the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it is +principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and strength of +heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, the friars are not +doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a refuge from despair. These +"bearded counsellors of God" keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing, +hold silence; whereas they might be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon +the Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or +reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among the +involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is +a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous +activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the +dwellers within such walls as these. The output--again a beautiful +word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the +stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once again upon those monastery +gates. + + + + +THE SEA WALL + + +A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish +association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright shadows of +grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves prick above +into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living in London, with +its too many windows and too few walls, the city which of all capitals +takes least visible hold upon the ground; or for the sake of some other +attraction or aversion, walls, blank and strong, reaching outward at the +base, are a satisfaction to the eyes teased by the inexpressive peering +of windows, by that weak lapse and shuffling which is the London "area," +and by the helpless hollows of shop-fronts. + +I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of wrought- +iron. A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line +among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But never more majestic +than in face of the wild sea, the wall, steadying its slanting foot upon +the rock, builds in the serried ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The +sea-wall is the wall at its best. And fine as it is on the strong coast, +it is beautiful on the weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a +northern beach. + +That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that +passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with the +winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the sky-line +of sea is jagged. Never from any height does the ocean-horizon show thus +broken and battered at its very verge, but from the flat coast and the +narrow world you can see the wave as far as you can see the water; and +the stormy light of a clear horizon is seen to be mobile and shifting +with the buoyant hillocks and their restless line. + +Nowhere in Holland does there seem to be such a low sea-wall as secures +many a mile of gentle English coast to the east. The Dutch dyke has not +that aspect of a lowly parapet against a tide; it springs with a look of +haste and of height; and when you first run upstairs from the encumbered +Dutch fields to look at the sea, there is nothing in the least like +England; and even the Englishman of to-day is apt to share something of +the old perversity that was minded to cast derision upon the Dutch in +their encounters with the tides. + +There has been some fault in the Dutch, making them subject to the slight +derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more romantic, and, as +it were, more slender. We English, once upon a time, did especially +flout the little nation then acting a history that proved worth the +writing. It may be no more than a brief perversity that has set a number +of our writers to cheer the memory of Charles II. Perhaps, even, it is +no more than another rehearsal of that untiring success at the expense of +the bourgeois. The bourgeois would be more simple than, in fact, he is +were he to stand up every time to be shocked; but, perhaps, the image of +his dismay is enough to reward the fancy of those who practise the wanton +art. And, when all is done, who performs for any but an imaginary +audience? Surely those companies of spectators and of auditors are not +the least of the makings of an author. A few men and women he achieves +within his books; but others does he create without, and to those figures +of all illusion makes the appeal of his art. More candid is the author +who has no world, but turns that appeal inwards to his own heart. He has +at least a living hearer. + +This is by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is done, the +dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch's was a dismal +time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the French King +remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, and the Dutch +in the Medway--all this was disaster. None the less, having the vanity +of new clothes and a pretty figure, did we--especially by the mouth of +Andrew Marvell--deride our victors, making sport of the Philistines with +a proper national sense of enjoyment of such physical disabilities, or +such natural difficulties, or such misfavour of fortune, as may beset the +alien. + +Especially were the denials of fortune matter for merriment. They are so +still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great novelist found +the smallness of some South German States to be the subject of unsating +banter. The German scenes at the end of "Vanity Fair," for example, may +prove how much the ridicule of mere smallness, fewness, poverty (and not +even real poverty, privation, but the poverty that shows in comparison +with the gold of great States, and is properly in proportion) rejoiced +the sense of humour in a writer and moralist who intended to teach +mankind to be less worldly. In Andrew Marvell's day they were even more +candid. The poverty of privation itself was provocative of the sincere +laughter of the inmost man, the true, infrequent laughter of the heart. +Marvell, the Puritan, laughed that very laughter--at leanness, at hunger, +cold, and solitude--in the face of the world, and in the name of +literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an English +Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared--not the smallness of the +lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness of clothing, nor the +fast. + + "This basso-rilievo of a man--" + +personal meagreness is the first joke and the last. + +It is not to be wondered at that he should find in the smallness of the +country of Holland matter for a cordial jest. But, besides the +smallness, there was that accidental and natural disadvantage in regard +to the sea. In the Venetians, commerce with the sea, conflict with the +sea, a victory over the sea, and the ensuing peace--albeit a less instant +battle and a more languid victory--were confessed to be noble; in the +Dutch they were grotesque. "With mad labour," says Andrew Marvell, with +the spirited consciousness of the citizen of a country well above ground +and free to watch the labour at leisure, "with mad labour" did the Dutch +"fish the land to shore." + + How did they rivet with gigantic piles, + Thorough the centre, their new-catched miles, + And to the stake a struggling country bound, + Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; + Building their watery Babel far more high + To reach the sea than those to scale the sky! + +It is done with a jolly wit, and in what admirable couplets! + + The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, + And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest. + +And it is even better sport that the astonished tritons and sea-nymphs +should find themselves provided with a capital _cabillau_ of shoals of +pickled Dutchmen (heeren for herring, says Marvell); and it must be +allowed that he rhymes with the enjoyment of irony. There is not a smile +for us in "Flecno," but it is more than possible to smile over this +"Character of Holland"; at the excluded ocean returning to play at leap- +frog over the steeples; at the rise of government and authority in +Holland, which belonged of right to the man who could best invent a +shovel or a pump, the country being so leaky:- + + Not who first sees the rising sun commands, + But who could first discern the rising lands. + +We have lost something more than the delighted laughter of Marvell, more +than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light in so +burly a frame--we have lost with these the wild humour that wore so well +the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much order, invention, +malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality--in a word, the +Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot stand firm within two +lines, but must slip beyond and between the boundaries, who tolerate the +couplets of Keats and imitate them, should praise the day of Charles II +because of Marvell's art, and not for love of the sorry reign. We had +plague, fire, and the Dutch in the Medway, but we had the couplet; and +there were also the measures of those more poetic poets, hitherto called +somewhat slightingly the Cavalier poets, who matched the wit of the +Puritan with a spirit simpler and less mocking. + +It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some +remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. It was a +time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so close, up in +the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed to be indeed +admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The gale came with an +indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed to break itself upon +the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in the voice of the sea +there were pauses, but none in that of the urgent gale with its hoo-hoo- +hoo all night, that clamoured down the calling of the waves. That lack +of pauses was the strangest thing in the tempest, because the increase of +sound seemed to imply a lull before. The lull was never perceptible, but +the lift was always an alarm. The onslaught was instant, where would it +stop? What was the secret extreme to which this hurry and force were +tending? You asked less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm +than what was drawing them. The attraction seemed the greater violence, +the more irresistible, and the more unknown. And there were moments when +the end seemed about to be attained. + +The wind struck us hasty blows, and unawares we borrowed, to describe it, +words fit for the sharp strokes of material things; but the fierce gale +is soft. Along the short grass, trembling and cowering flat on the +scarped hill-side, against the staggering horse, against the flint walls, +one with the rock they grasp, the battery of the tempest is a quick and +enormous softness. What down, what sand, what deep moss, what elastic +wave could match the bed and cushion of the gale? + +This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up together. +The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling whiteness of +foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such narrow waters you +do not see the distances, the wide levels of fleeting and floating foam, +that lie light between long wave and long wave on a Mediterranean coast, +regions of delicate and transitory brightness so far out that all the +waves, near and far, seem to be breaking at the same moment, one beyond +the other, and league beyond league, into foam. But the Channel has its +own strong, short curl that catches the rushing shingle up with the +freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, white upon the +white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls and the light of a +shining cloud. + + + + +TITHONUS + + +"It was resolved," said the morning paper, "to colour the borders of the +panels and other spaces of Portland stone with arabesques and other +patterns, but that no paint should be used, as paint would need renewing +from time to time. The colours, therefore,"--and here is the passage to +be noted--"are all mixed with wax liquefied with petroleum; and the wax +surface sets as hard as marble. . . The wax is left time to form an +imperishable surface of ornament, which would have to be cut out of the +stone with a chisel if it was desired to remove it." Not, apparently, +that a new surface is formed which, by much violence and perseverance, +could, years hence, be chipped off again; but that the "ornament" is +driven in and incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is +nothing possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of +ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled. + +Will this victory over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny +prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the +future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the strongest +of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by the human +race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this success in the +stencilling of St Paul's teach us, to our confusion. There is evidently +a man--a group of men--happy at this moment because it has been possible, +by great ingenuity, to force our posterity to have their cupola of St +Paul's with the stone mouldings stencilled and "picked out" with niggling +colours, whether that undefended posterity like it or not. And this is a +survival of one of the obscure pleasures of man, attested by history. + +It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and not +to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, eternal +legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of this former +human wish. If Galileo's Inquisitors put a check upon the earth, which +yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the Reformers' who arrested the +moving man, and inhibited the moving God. The sixteenth century and a +certain part of the age immediately following seem to be times when the +desire had conspicuously become a passion. Say the middle of the +sixteenth century in Italy and the beginning of the seventeenth in +England--for in those days we were somewhat in the rear. _There_ is the +obstinate, confident, unreluctant, undoubting, and resolved seizure upon +power. _Then_ was Rome rebuilt, re-faced, marked with a single sign and +style. Then was many a human hand stretched forth to grasp the fate of +the unborn. The fortunes and the thoughts of the day to come were to be +as the day then present would have them, if the dead hand--the living +hand that was then to die, and was to keep its hold in death--could by +any means make them fast. + +Obviously, to build at all is to impose something upon an age that may be +more than willing to build for itself. The day may soon come when no man +will do even so much without some impulse of apology. Posterity is not +compelled to keep our pictures or our books in existence, nor to read nor +to look at them; but it is more or less obliged to have a stone building +in view for an age or two. We can hardly avoid some of the forms of +tyranny over the future, but few, few are the living men who would +consent to share in this horrible ingenuity at St Paul's--this petroleum +and this wax. + +In 1842 they were discussing the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, +and the efforts of all in council were directed upon the future. How the +frescoes then to be achieved by the artists of the day should be made +secure against all mischances--smoke, damp, "the risk of bulging," even +accidents attending the washing of upper floors--all was discussed in +confidence with the public. It was impossible for anyone who read the +papers then to escape from some at least of the responsibilities of +technical knowledge. From Genoa, from Rome, from Munich especially, all +kinds of expert and most deliberate schemes were gathered in order to +defeat the natural and not superfluous operation of efficient and +effacing time. + +The academic little capital of Bavaria had, at about the same date, +decorated a vast quantity of wall space of more than one order of +architecture. Art revived and was encouraged at that time and place with +unparalleled obstinacy. They had not the malice of the petroleum that +does violence to St Paul's; but they had instead an indomitable patience. +Under the commands of the master Cornelius, they baffled time and all his +work--refused his pardons, his absolutions, his cancelling indulgences--by +a perseverance that nothing could discourage. Who has not known somewhat +indifferent painters mighty busy about their colours and varnishes? +Cornelius caused a pit to be dug for the preparation of the lime, and in +the case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime remained there for eight years, +with frequent stirrings. This was in order that the whole fresco, when +at last it was entrusted to its bed, should be set there for immortality. +Nor did the master fail to thwart time by those mechanical means that +should avert the risk of bulging already mentioned. He neglected no +detail. He was provident, and he lay in wait for more than one of the +laws of nature, to frustrate them. Gravitation found him prepared, and +so did the less majestic but not vain dispensation of accidents. Against +bulging he had an underplot of tiles set on end; against possible +trickling from an upper floor he had asphalt; it was all part of the +human conspiracy. In effect, the dull pictures at Munich seem to stand +well. It would have been more just--so the present age thinks of these +preserved walls--if the day that admired them had had them exclusively, +and our day had been exempt. The painted cathedrals of the Middle Ages +have undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche? + +In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to +shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and art. +They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came from Munich +to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a heart of +confidence into the breast of the Commission. The situation, he averred, +need not be too damp for immortality, with due care. What he had done in +the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek might be done with the best results +in England, in defiance of the weather, of the river, of the mere days, +of the divine order of alteration, and, in a word, of heaven and earth. + +Meanwhile, there was that good servant of the law of change, lime that +had not been kept quite long enough, ready to fulfil its mission; they +would have none of it. They evaded it, studied its ways, and put it to +the rout. "Many failures that might have been hastily attributed to damp +were really owing to the use of lime in too fresh a state. Of the +experimental works painted at Munich, those only have faded which are +known to have been done without due attention to the materials. _Thus, +a figure of Bavaria, painted by Kaulbach, which has faded considerably, +is known to have been executed with lime that was too fresh_." One +cannot refrain from italics: the way was so easy; it was only to take a +little less of this important care about the lime, to have a better +confidence, to be more impatient and eager, and all had been well: +_not_ to do--a virtue of omission. + +This is not a matter of art-criticism. It is an ethical question +hitherto unstudied. The makers of laws have not always been obliged to +face it, inasmuch as their laws are made in part for the present, and in +part for that future whereof the present needs to be assured--that is, +the future is bound as a guaranty for present security of person or +property. Some such hold upon the time to come we are obliged to claim, +and to claim it for our own sakes--because of the reflex effect upon our +own affairs, and not for the pleasure of fettering the time to come. +Every maker of a will does at least this. + +Were the men of the sixteenth century so moderate? Not they. They found +the present all too narrow for the imposition of their will. It did not +satisfy them to disinter and scatter the bones of the dead, nor to efface +the records of a past that offended them. It did not satisfy them to +bind the present to obedience by imperative menace and instant +compulsion. When they had burnt libraries and thrown down monuments and +pursued the rebels of the past into the other world, and had seen to it +that none living should evade them, then they outraged the future. + +Whatever misgivings may have visited those dominant minds as to the +effectual and final success of their measures--would their writ run in +time as well as place, and were the nameless populations indeed their +subjects?--whatever questions may have peered in upon those rigid +counsels and upon those busy vigils of the keepers of the world, they +silenced by legislation and yet more legislation. They wrote in statute +books; they would have written their will across the skies. Their hearts +would have burnt for lack of records more inveterate, and of testimonials +that mankind should lack courage to question, if in truth they did ever +doubt lest posterity might try their lock. Perhaps they did never so +much as foresee the race of the unnumbered and emancipated for whom their +prohibitions and penalties are no more than documents of history. + +If the tyrannous day of our fathers had but possessed the means of these +our more diffident times! They, who would have written their present and +actual will upon the skies, might certainly have written it in petroleum +and wax upon the stone. Fate did them wrong in withholding from their +hands this means of finality and violence. Into our hands it has been +given at a time when the student of the race thought, perhaps, that we +had been proved in the school of forbearance. Something, indeed, we may +have learnt therein, but not enough, as we now find. + +We have not yet the natural respect for the certain knowledge and the +probable wisdom of our successors. A certain reverend official document, +not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately recommended to the +veneration of the present times "those past ages with their store of +experience." Doubtless, as the posterity of their predecessors our +predecessors had experience, but, as our ancestors, none--none. +Therefore, if they were a little reverend our own posterity is right +reverend. It is a flippant and novelty-loving humour that so flatters +the unproved past and refuses the deference due to the burden of years +which is ours, which--grown still graver--will be our children's. + + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the art +of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of accident, +it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of accidental value, +and not of integral necessity. The virtual discovery of Japanese art, +during the later years of the second French Empire, caused Europe to +relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how lovely Incident may look +when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson was most welcome. Japan has +had her full influence. European art has learnt the value of position +and the tact of the unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her +characteristic art) content with her own conventions; she is local, +provincial, alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world +that has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched by +Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained the +noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, too, +symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of phase +and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong in a +complete melody--of symmetry in its most delicate and lively and least +stationary form--balance; whereas the _leit-motif_ is isolated. In +domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make a familiar +antithesis--the very commonplace of rival methods of art. But the same +antithesis exists in less obvious forms. The poets have sought +"irregular" metres. Incident hovers, in the very act of choosing its +right place, in the most modern of modern portraits. In these we have, +if not the Japanese suppression of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese +exaggeration of major emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. +The smile, the figure, the drapery--not yet settled from the arranging +touch of a hand, and showing its mark--the restless and unstationary +foot, and the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In passing, +a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture and the aspect +of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; whether still or in +motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have the alertness and +expectancy of flight in all their flocks of leaves, while the oaks and +elms are gathered in their station. All this is not Japanese, but from +such accident is Japanese art inspired, with its good luck of +perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counterchange +for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction +between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives may +be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not known as +motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. Repetition +and counterchange, of course, have their place in Japanese ornament, as +in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular an +invention, but here, too, uniqueness and position are the principal +inspiration. And it is quite worth while, and much to the present +purpose, to call attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese +diaper patterns, which is _interruption_. Repetition there must +necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which +is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and the +avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese design of +this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, you have a +curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though a separate +intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. Such renewed +consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness in design has more +peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of Japanese lines, in their +curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary to say that a line, in all +other schools of art, is long or short according to its place and +purpose; but only the Japanese designer so contrives his patterns that +the line is always short; and many repeating designs are entirely +composed of this various and variously-occurring brevity, this prankish +avoidance of the goal. Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the +unit of their repeating patterns, by another simple device--that of +numbers. They make a small difference in the number of curves and of +lines. A great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it +would look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one side +and six on another would be something else than a mere variation, and +variety would be lost by the use of them. The Japanese decorator will +vary three in this place by two in that, and a sense of the defeat of +symmetry is immediately produced. With more violent means the idea of +symmetry would have been neither suggested nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in Japanese +compositions, complete designs in which there is no point of symmetry. It +is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. There is no sense of lack +of equilibrium, because place is, most subtly, made to have the effect of +giving or of subtracting value. A small thing is arranged to reply to a +large one, for the small thing is placed at the precise distance that +makes it a (Japanese) equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other +countries) the scales commonly in use are furnished with only a single +weight that increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it +nearer or farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many +ounces when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it +hangs from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese +composition. Its place is its significance and its value. Such an art +of position implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few +things and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or +silences in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or +material, of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of +space--that is, collocation--that makes the value of empty intervals. The +space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is valuable +because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, is only another +way of saying that position is the principle of this apparently wilful +art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped to +justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending +Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral +support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind of +shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator's +knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the +spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. +Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written his signs so +freely had not the Japanese so freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, +the transitory and destructible material of Japanese art has done as much +as the multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer--the black and white artist--to working +for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of its daily life +by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means of paper, printed. +But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a destructive people, paper with +us means short life, quick abolition, transformation, re-appearance, a +very circulation of life. This is our present way of surviving +ourselves--the new version of that feat of life. Time was when to +survive yourself meant to secure, for a time indefinitely longer than the +life of man, such dull form as you had given to your work; to intrude +upon posterity. To survive yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into +daily oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper does +not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them a +different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned old +lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory +material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. What of +Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to a monotonous +convention to merit the serious study of races that have produced Cotman +and Corot. Japanese landscape-drawing reduces things seen to such +fewness as must have made the art insuperably tedious to any people less +fresh-spirited and more inclined to take themselves seriously than these +Orientals. A preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little +closer attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape--it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive--a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, and the +flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions of a people +intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to define by that +phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? Upon such search these +people are avowedly intent, even though they show themselves capable of +exquisite appreciation of the form of a normal bird and of the habit of +growth of a normal flower. They are not in search of the perpetual +slight novelty which was Aristotle's ideal of the language poetic ("a +little wildly, or with the flower of the mind," says Emerson of the way +of a poet's speech)--and such novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of +the pinion, that keeps verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are +intent upon is perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields +has eyes less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in +the path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in +fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness +he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. The +art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and not +the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby this people +conventionally signify wave or cloud. All these curls have an attitude +which is like that of a figure slightly malformed, and not like that of a +human body that is perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or +niggling labour. Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard +to say; they have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where +the upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and--especially in gold embroideries--is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, while +the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads take by +nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no other +art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The Japanese have +generally evaded even the local beauty of their own race for the sake of +perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is remote from our sympathy and +admiration; and it is quite possible that we might miss it in pictorial +presentation, and that the Japanese artist may have intended human beauty +where we do not recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is +certainly not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate dignity, +even--to be very generous--has been admired by the Japanese artist, and +is represented here and there occasionally, in the figure of warrior or +mousme. But even with this exception the habit of Japanese +figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, and crooked. It is +curious to observe that the search for slight deformity is so constant as +to make use, for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective +foreshortening. With us it is to the youngest child only that there +would appear to be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently +forward, would seem to have his head "beneath his shoulders." The +European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, +but--unused to the same effect "in the flat"--he thinks it prodigiously +humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. The Japanese +keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but +not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened +figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it than +the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion of +ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not precisely +scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous models. He +makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no need to +insist upon the ignoble character of those that are intentional +caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek decoration, and +would be glad to forget it, with the intention of learning that art +afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. But whatever may be +the phases of the arts, there is the abiding principle of symmetry in the +body of man, that goes erect, like an upright soul. Its balance is +equal. Exterior human symmetry is surely a curious physiological fact +where there is no symmetry interiorly. For the centres of life and +movement within the body are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is +Greek without and Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the +skeleton and of the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a +principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human +action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite +incidents--inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of +sleep--the symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that +symmetry complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because this +hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and that the +sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal +heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are +inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, +and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, +fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art. The order of +inflection that is not infraction has been explained in a most +authoritative sentence of criticism of literature, a sentence that should +save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak +experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, +"should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been +the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the _modulus_ of whose verse has been most +variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with feelings and +passions which are the inflections of moral law in their theme. Law puts +a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon law. +Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language is a +continual _slight_ novelty. In the highest poetry, like that of Milton, +these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all +chime together in praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual +proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry is +a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition of +human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle or +be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious +life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and +the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form +of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the +nobler and the more perdurable relation. + + + + +THE PLAID + + +It is disconcerting to hear of the plaid in India. Our dyes, we know, +they use in the silk mills of Bombay, with the deplorable result that +their old clothes are dull and unintentionally falsified with +infelicitous decay. The Hindus are a washing people; and the sun and +water that do but dim, soften, and warm the native vegetable dyes to the +last, do but burlesque the aniline. Magenta is bad enough when it is +itself; but the worst of magenta is that it spoils but poorly. No bad +modern forms and no bad modern colours spoil well. And spoiling is an +important process. It is a test--one of the ironical tests that come too +late with their proofs. London portico-houses will make some such ruins +as do chemical dyes, which undergo no use but derides them, no accidents +but caricature them. This is an old enough grievance. But the plaid! + +The plaid is the Scotchman's contribution to the decorative art of the +world. Scotland has no other indigenous decoration. In his most +admirable lecture on "The Two Paths," Ruskin acknowledged, with a passing +misgiving, that his Highlanders had little art. And the misgiving was +but passing, because he considered how fatally wrong was the art of +India--"it never represents a natural fact. It forms its compositions +out of meaningless fragments of colour and flowings of line . . . It will +not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, +but only a spiral or a zig-zag." Because of this aversion from Nature +the Hindu and his art tended to evil, we read. But of the Scot we are +told, "You will find upon reflection that all the highest points of the +Scottish character are connected with impressions derived straight from +the natural scenery of their country." + +What, then, about the plaid? Where is the natural fact there? If the +Indian, by practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, cuts +himself off "from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or natural +delight," to what did the good and healthy Highlander condemn himself by +practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may be found in the vine, and +a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in nature is the plaid to be found? +There is surely no curve or curl that can be drawn by a designing hand +but is a play upon some infinitely various natural fact. The smoke of +the cigarette, more sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its +waves so multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and +such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence and +impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering curls +ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand--and that is not a Hindu hand, nor +any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured the curve of the +section of a sea-wave--its flow, relaxation, and fall; but this is a +single movement, whereas the line of cigarette-smoke in a still room +fluctuates in twenty delicate directions. No, it is impossible to accept +the saying that the poor spiral or scroll of a human design is anything +but a participation in the innumerable curves and curls of nature. + +Now the plaid is not only "cut off" from natural sources, as Ruskin says +of Oriental design--the plaid is not only cut off from nature, and cut +off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured off in inorganic +quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional contradiction of all +natural or vital forms. And it is equally defiant of vital tone and of +vital colour. Everywhere in nature tone is gradual, and between the +fainting of a tone and the failing of a curve there is a charming +analogy. But the tartan insists that its tone shall be invariable, and +sharply defined by contrasts of dark and light. As to colour, it has +colours, not colour. + +But that plaid should now go so far afield as to decorate the noble +garment of the Indies is ill news. True, Ruskin saw nothing but cruelty +and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an Indian maxim in +regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready sufferers: "There," says +the _Mahabharata_, "where women are treated with respect, the very gods +are said to be filled with joy. Women deserve to be honoured. Serve ye +them. Bend your will before them. By honouring women ye are sure to +attain to the fruition of all things." And the rash teachers of our +youth would have persuaded us that this generous lesson was first learnt +in Teutonic forests! + +Nothing but extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be +suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. Accordingly +the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil to the souls of +her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great-grandmother-in-law, in +gratitude for their giving her a good husband. And to go back for a +moment to Ruskin's contrast of the two races, it was assuredly under the +stress of some too rash reasoning that he judged the lovely art of the +East as a ministrant to superstition, cruelty, and pleasure, whether +wrought upon the temple, the sword, or the girdle. The innocent art of +innocent Hindu women for centuries decked their most modest heads, their +dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving breasts, and +consecrated chambers. + + + + +THE FLOWER + + +There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed by +those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere witnesses, in +its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. In the shape of +the flower his own paltriness revisits him--his triviality, his sloth, +his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. +These return to him and wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the +tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country +lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have +sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a +cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal +and leaf--the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by +rote--are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and +insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all +imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed +for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is beset with flowers. It +blooms, a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron garden. The floor flourishes +with blossoms adust, poorly conventionalized into a kind of order; the +table-cover is ablaze with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper +is set with bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and +lilies in its very construction; over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig +is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the plaster +picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in the pediment +of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, in the +finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the "grained" +door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale +inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the grate +but some blunt, black-leaded garland? The recital is wearisome, but the +retribution of the flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution +of man, the haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his +inconsiderable brain. + +The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling--subjection to the +smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap patterns is +no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain and transitory +author by the phrase. In literature as in all else man merits his +subjection to trivialities by his economical greed. A condition for +using justly and gaily any decoration would seem to be a measure of +reluctance. Ornament--strange as the doctrine sounds in a world +decivilized--was in the beginning intended to be something jocund; and +jocundity was never to be achieved but by postponement, deference, and +modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in +dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than modertion: she +has an innumerable singleness. Her buttercup meadows are not prodigal; +they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly +the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his +delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his +wishes--the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous +Fate that man should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her +answer every time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the day +when she shall make the one tremendous difference among her gifts--and +make it perhaps in secret--by naming one of them the ultimate. What, for +novelty, what, for singleness, what, for separateness, can equal the +last? Of many thousand kisses the poor last--but even the kisses of your +mouth are all numbered. + + + + +UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM + + +It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of +man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the form of +man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is at least as +important as the scenery of geological structure, or the scenery of +architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the lovers of +mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have consented to +ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, inasmuch as it has the +finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing forms which, coming +at the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its +unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the +body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never +stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first +suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is +erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, +because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best +leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which +the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor +supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot, +with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious +instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should +no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of +piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive +of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they +are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly +possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent +writer is praised for "clothing his thought," it is to modern raiment +that one's agile fancy flies--fain of completing the metaphor! + +The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other than +the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the multiplication of +undignified forms that fill the streets, and demonstrate, and meet, and +listen to the speaker. For the undistinguished are very important by +their numbers. These are they who make the look of the artificial world. +They are man generalized; as units they inevitably lack something of +interest; all the more they have cumulative effect. It would be well if +we could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in +the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to be +changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are their +national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing of other +men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the reformed +dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have turned second- +hand. + + + + +VICTORIAN CARICATURE + + +There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, of a +certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century and +earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its aim the +vulgarizing of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas Jerrold +for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that humourist's serial, +"Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," which were presumably considered good +comic reading in the "Punch" of that time, and to make acquaintance with +a certain ideal of the grotesque. Obviously to make a serious comment on +anything which others consider or have considered humorous is to put +oneself at a disadvantage. He who sees the joke holds himself somewhat +the superior of the man who would see it, such as it is, if he thought it +worth his eyesight. The last-named has to bear the least tolerable of +modern reproaches--that he lacks humour; but he need not always care. Now +to turn over Douglas Jerrold's monologues is to find that people in the +mid-century took their mirth principally from the life of the _arriere +boutique_. On that shabby stage was enacted the comedy of literature. +Therefore we must take something of the vulgarity of Jerrold as a +circumstance of the social ranks wherein he delighted. But the essential +vulgarity is that of the woman. There is in some old "Punch" volume a +drawing by Leech--whom one is weary of hearing named the gentle, the +refined--where the work of the artist has vied with the spirit of the +letterpress. Douglas Jerrold treats of the woman's jealousy, Leech of +her stays. They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And +page by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that time +there was, moreover, one great humourist, one whom I infinitely admire; +he, too, I am grieved to remember, bore his part willingly in vulgarizing +the woman; and the part that fell to him was the vulgarizing of the act +of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing man at the law for evading her +fatuous companionship, woman incoherent, woman abandoned without +restraint to violence and temper, woman feigning sensibility--in none of +these ignominies is woman so common and so foolish for Dickens as she is +in child-bearing. + +I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are +humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is +moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is that +her husband--himself wearisome enough to die of--is weary of her, finds +the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him that she should +furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, to the annoyance of her +husband, and that her husband should have no desire to adorn her, and +that her mother should be intolerable. It pleases him that her baby, +with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette in its hat--a burlesque +baby--should be a grotesque object of her love, for that too makes subtly +for her abasement. Charles Keene, again--another contemporary, though he +lived into a later and different time. He saw little else than common +forms of human ignominy--indignities of civic physique, of stupid +prosperity, of dress, of bearing. He transmits these things in greater +proportion than he found them--whether for love of the humour of them, or +by a kind of inverted disgust that is as eager as delight--one is not +sure which is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities is rendered +with a completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain +sensitiveness of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get +convinced that real apprehension--real apprehensiveness--would not have +insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through almost +a whole career. There is one drawing in the "Punch" of years ago, in +which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible to even the +invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual broadcloth, has +gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and his umbrella open, and +the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when she awakes, the wife asleep +at his side in a night-cap. Every one who knows Keene's work can imagine +how the huge well-fed figure was drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across +the back, and how the bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene +drawing is matched by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, +ignominies of married life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old +common jape against the mother-in-law; abominable weddings: in one +drawing a bridegroom with shambling side-long legs asks his bride if she +is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, "No, never was." In all +these things there is very little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was +in the figures of his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness which in really +fine work could never be absent from a man's thought of a child or from +his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the subject in hand, is +absolutely lacking in Keene's designs; nevertheless, we acknowledge that +there is humour. It is also in some of his clerical figures when they +are not caricatures, and certainly in "Robert," the City waiter of +"Punch." But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all +Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon +her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the +social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for +her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies +and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper +the possession of whom is her boast, what then is she? + +This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular form +of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the habit by which +some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, whereas a silly man is +not reproached through his sex. But the vulgarity of which I have +written here was distinctively English--the most English thing that +England had in days when she bragged of many another--and it was not able +to survive an increased commerce of manners and letters with France. It +was the chief immorality destroyed by the French novel. + + + + +THE POINT OF HONOUR + + +Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. In +Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not +explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; he +made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own +candour, and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the +chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and +when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour. +Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced +the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply +asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his +word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of +a share in his responsibility. + +Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to be +believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of his +credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, his self- +defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible mysteries in art. +"You can see for yourself," the lesser man seems to say to the world, +"thus things are, and I render them in such manner that your intelligence +may be satisfied." This is an appeal to average experience--at the best +the cumulative experience; and with the average, or with the sum, art +cannot deal without derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: "Thus things +are in my pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so." We are not +excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain +authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art of +seeing pictorially which is the beginning and not far from the end--not +far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little indeed are we +shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's impression that +Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his colleagues. Thus may each +of us to whom he appeals take praise from the praised: he leaves my +educated eyes to do a little of the work. He respects my responsibility +no less--though he respects it less explicitly--than I do his. What he +allows me would not be granted by a meaner master. If he does not hold +himself bound to prove his own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It +is as though he used his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his +house my own. In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the +honours of his picture. + +Because Impressionism with all its extreme--let us hope its +ultimate--derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. Because +there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. To +undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing its +obligations--or at least without confessing them up to the point of +honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities precisely where +there are duties, and an advantage where there is a bond. A very mob of +men have taken Impressionism upon themselves, in several forms and under +a succession of names, in this our later day. It is against all +probabilities that more than a few among these have within them the point +of honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And to +distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of these +landscape-painters, deliberately rash, are painting the truth of their +own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is easily answered; +truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the intelligence of the +common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the _dubium_ concerns +not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that their +sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate equipoise of +perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are enough? Now +Impressionists have told us things as to their impressions--as to the +effect of things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of +that--which should not be asserted except on the artistic point of +honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but should not trust +themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgement, +but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last +judgement, which is the judgement within. There is too much reason to +divine that a certain number of those who aspire to differ from the +greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of +view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying. +And to be, _de parti pris_, an Impressionist without these! O +Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach in her own +things. An author, here and there, will make as though he had a word +worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to withdraw +even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too +probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is the craft +and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded +by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy +risk, that undefined salvation. If the artistic temperament--tedious +word!--with all its grotesque privileges, becomes yet more common than it +is, there will be yet less responsibility; for the point of honour is the +simple secret of the few. + + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But the +true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, or of +life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the colour +of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully +visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal +and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not the manifestation +thereof. It is one of the things the value of which is secrecy, one of +the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. The true colour of life +is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit +and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the +modest colour of the unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life is +outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that it is +white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than earth; red, +but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less lucid than the +colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in all fine colour; +but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. Under Sicilian skies, +indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under the misty blue of the +English zenith, and the warm grey of the London horizon, it is as +delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, out to their utmost, flat as +stars, in the hedges of the end of June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any mass. +The human face does not give much of it, what with features, and beards, +and the shadow of the top-hat and _chapeau melon_ of man, and of the +veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is subject to a thousand +injuries and accidents. The popular face of the Londoner has soon lost +its gold, its white, and the delicacy of its red and brown. We miss +little beauty by the fact that it is never seen freely in great numbers +out-of-doors. You get it in some quantity when all the heads of a great +indoor meeting are turned at once upon a speaker; but it is only in the +open air, needless to say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in +the open air, "clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and +direct, or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of all his +ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer north-west +evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke of eight he +sheds the slough of nameless colours--all allied to the hues of dust, +soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has chosen for its +boys--and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and delicate flush between +the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. Clothed now with the sun, he +is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars as he goes to bathe, and the +reflection of an early moon is under his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. They +are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but only a +little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. The last and +most finished action of her intellect, passion, and knowledge is, as it +were, the flicking away of some insignificant thing mistaken for art by +other actors, some little obstacle to the way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, and +the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking colour +of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, he still +shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels and elastic +syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, his +brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening +midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature +has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the happily easy +way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to grow in the +streets--and no streets could ask for a more charming finish than your +green grass. The gasometer even must fall to pieces unless it is +renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is nothing so remediable as +the work of modern man--"a thought which is also," as Mr Pecksniff said, +"very soothing." And by remediable I mean, of course, destructible. As +the bathing child shuffles off his garments--they are few, and one brace +suffices him--so the land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off +its yellow brick and purple slate, and all the things that collect about +railway stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery of +Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea-coast. To +have once seen it there should be enough to make a colourist. O +memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared +setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea had the +dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect--the dark and +not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything was very +definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The most luminous +thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be +white because it was a little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. +It was still the whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous +thing was the little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of +life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the +violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious +history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the +scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. +Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you +consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to +spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but +to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, +social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, +according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the +tribune, was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and the +innermost--the privacy of death--was never allowed to put obstacles in +the way of public action for a public cause. Women might be, and were, +duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gouges, they claimed a +"right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of +the laws"; but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear +political responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was +guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public and complete amends. + + + + +THE HORIZON + + +To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter than +yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you raise the +horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. It is like the +scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his dramatic Italian hands, +bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does more than bid them. He lifts +them, he gathers them up, far and near, with the upward gesture of both +arms; he takes them to their feet with the compulsion of his expressive +force. Or it is as when a conductor takes his players to successive +heights of music. You summon the sea, you bring the mountains, the +distances unfold unlooked-for wings and take an even flight. You are but +a man lifting his weight upon the upward road, but as you climb the +circle of the world goes up to face you. + +Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen unfolds. +This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are on the wing, +and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and wait upon your +eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your eyelids, but by the +pilgrimage of your body. "Lift thine eyes to the mountains." It is then +that other mountains lift themselves to your human eyes. + +It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another that +makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All the landscape +is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, and its inner harbours +literally come to light; the headlands repeat themselves; little cups +within the treeless hills open and show their farms. In the sea are many +regions. A breeze is at play for a mile or two, and the surface is +turned. There are roads and curves in the blue and in the white. Not a +step of your journey up the height that has not its replies in the steady +motion of land and sea. Things rise together like a flock of +many-feathered birds. + +But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search of. +That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift the horizon to +the equality of your sight that you go high. You give it a distance +worthy of the skies. There is no distance, except the distance in the +sky, to be seen from the level earth; but from the height is to be seen +the distance of this world. The line is sent back into the remoteness of +light, the verge is removed beyond verge, into a distance that is +enormous and minute. + +So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less near +than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here on the edges +of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world--we know no other +place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so small and tender. The +touches of her passing, as close as dreams, or the utmost vanishing of +the forest or the ocean in the white light between the earth and the air; +nothing else is quite so intimate and fine. The extremities of a +mountain view have just such tiny touches as the closeness of closed eyes +shuts in. + +On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars the +simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface it, +by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky disappears on +that shining edge; there is not substance enough for colour. The rim of +the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, of the sea--let it only be +far enough--has the same absorption of colour; and even the dark things +drawn upon the bright edges of the sky are lucid, the light is among +them, and they are mingled with it. The horizon has its own way of +making bright the pencilled figures of forests, which are black but +luminous. + +On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. There +you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds--not a thunder sky--is not a +wall but the underside of a floor. You see the clouds that repeat each +other grow smaller by distance; and you find a new unity in the sky and +earth that gather alike the great lines of their designs to the same +distant close. There is no longer an alien sky, tossed up in +unintelligible heights above a world that is subject to intelligible +perspective. + +Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted is +the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; not the +spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from the +parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of soot; but +rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a beautiful thing of the +London smoke at times, and in some places of the sky; but not there, not +where the soft sharp distance ought to shine. To be dull there is to put +all relations and comparisons in the wrong, and to make the sky lawless. + +A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens the line +and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly dims it, +or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the sky. The stormy +horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high enough, and you can raise +the light from beyond the shower, and the shadow from behind the ray. +Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke disobeys and defeats the summer of +the eyes. + +Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their sea. A +child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they +cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never in the +solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape +Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen +anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, when he was +alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. The sailor has +nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast he would be isolated +in as small a world as that of a traveller through the plains. + +Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them so +perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying to flight +with flight. + +A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing +hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think +something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the +centre of it. + +As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so steady, +so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further sea lies away, +hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding world, with its looks +serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals of many miles, its +signs and communications of light, gathers down and pauses. This flock +of birds which is the mobile landscape wheels and goes to earth. The +Cardinal weighs down the audience with his downward hands. Farewell to +the most delicate horizon. + + + + +IN JULY + + +One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of the +green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of maturity, +for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their +differences of character and not of mere date. Almost all the green is +grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened and a daily colour, in +majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey skies, and might look, to +inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as eleven o'clock looks after +the dawn. + +Gravity is the word--not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace as at +night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, common +freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and day. In +childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise +than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher +sensibility for April and April evenings--a heartache for them, which in +riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled. + +But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find daily +things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has no great +delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness of the summer +that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere day and of late +summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have long ceased to be +sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot now find anything in +nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, lost sight of the further +awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer see so much of the past in April +twilight as they saw when they had no past; but which look freshly at the +dailiness of green summer, of early afternoon, of every sky of any form +that comes to pass, and of the darkened elms. + +Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting close, +unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when it looks alone to +a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, across all the old +forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, and could walk a county +gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, as one walks a garden +collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, would not the harvest be +a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion for poplars is a most +intelligible passion. The eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole +day's journey. Not one is unperceived, even though great timber should +be passed, and hill-sides dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a +poplar day of it. Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for +the poplars everywhere reply to the glance. The woods may be all +various, but the poplars are separate. + +All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with them) +shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. It is easy +to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance pay them a flash of +recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you journey you are suddenly +aware of them close by. Light and the breezes are as quick as the eyes +of a poplar-lover to find the willing tree that dances to be seen. + +No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for oneself an +oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and many would be +missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert enough for a +traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do not sleep. From +within some little grove of other trees a single poplar makes a slight +sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep the wind. They are salient +everywhere, and full of replies. They are as fresh as streams. + +It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. And +yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much mingled with +a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes to recognize their +unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and keep still, the poplar +and the aspen do not darken--or hardly--and the deepest summer will not +find a day in which they do not keep awake. No waters are so vigilant, +even where a lake is bare to the wind. + +When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair "with fingers +cool as aspen leaves," he knew the coolest thing in the world. It is a +coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which the breeze takes on both +sides--the greenish and the greyish. The poplar green has no glows, no +gold; it is an austere colour, as little rich as the colour of willows, +and less silvery than theirs. The sun can hardly gild it; but he can +shine between. Poplars and aspens let the sun through with the wind. You +may have the sky sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the +woods are close. + +Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher's net ever took such glancing fishes, nor +did the net of a constellation's shape ever enclose more vibrating +Pleiades. + + + + +CLOUD + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to see the +clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by the rest of +England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not to see the clear +sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in London. You may go +for a week or two at a time, even though you hold your head up as you +walk, and even though you have windows that really open, and yet you +shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled glass +towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They are, +therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other windows were +used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or even knew so much +as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world knows. +Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; +but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes its way round the +world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The +terrestrial scenery--the tourist's--is a prisoner compared with this. The +tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with +earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for +its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green +flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the +greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or fade +according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, the +luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that their +own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, effaced +before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the +cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful +of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate +revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground +shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain +slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the +view by the rough method of standing in front of it. But its greatest +things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence does it distribute the +sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more mysteries +than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. Thence it +writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or lets the pencils +of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and yet making dark, it +sheds deep colour upon the forest land of Sussex, so that, seen from the +hills, all the country is divided between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the world. Its +own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to improve. It is +always great: above the street, above the suburbs, above the gas-works +and the stucco, above the faces of painted white houses--the painted +surfaces that have been devised as the only things able to vulgarise +light, as they catch it and reflect it grotesquely from their importunate +gloss. This is to be well seen on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above some +little landscape of rather paltry interest--a conventional river heavy +with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, and shrubberies; +and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as the novelists always +have it, with "autumn tints." High over these rises, in the enormous +scale of the scenery of clouds, what no man expected--an heroic sky. Few +of the things that were ever done upon earth are great enough to be done +under such a heaven. It was surely designed for other days. It is for +an epic world. Your eyes sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the +distances of earth to these, and what are the distances of the clear and +cloudless sky? The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the +round world dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are +unmeasured--you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star +itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, with +conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. Man would +not have known distance veritably without the clouds. There are +mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of the earth are +pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not overpowering by +disproportion, like some futile building fatuously made too big for the +human measure. The cloud in its majestic place composes with a little +Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the futile building, while the +cloud is no mansion for man, and out of reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the custody +of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. The cloud +veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry ray, suddenly +bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a background. Or +when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals him, gentle beyond hope. +It makes peace, constantly, just before sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. There is +a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are bowled by a +breeze from behind the evening. They are round and brilliant, and come +leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is a frolic and haphazard +sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed about +it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the clouds in +turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes aloft are swept +at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. Promontory after +league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in the sky is called +out of mist and grey by the same finger. The cloudland is very great, +but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this scenery. +It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of the winter, that +the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for many and many a day no +London eye can see the horizon, or the first threat of the cloud like a +man's hand. There never was a great painter who had not exquisite +horizons, and if Corot and Crome were right, the Londoner loses a great +thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he loses its +shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and rosy head piling +into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the base and the altitude. +The perspective of a cloud is a great part of its design--whether it lies +so that you can look along the immense horizontal distances of its floor, +or whether it rears so upright a pillar that you look up its mountain +steeps in the sky as you look at the rising heights of a mountain that +stands, with you, on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not merely +the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the sun's +treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We talk of +sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the +illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic +of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon is the bride, this is +the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most beautiful +of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no name, and no other +cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such heights of blue air. The +shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, comes across the sky with so +influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can be better worth +watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London streets is that people +take their rain there without knowing anything of the cloud that drops +it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. The shower-cloud there has +limits of time, but no limits of form, and no history whatever. It has +not come from the clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not +shoulder anon the hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly +comes or goes; it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the +path of its retreat. + + + + +SHADOWS + + +Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and +unencumbered with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple house +is that the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs of +shadows. The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought oftener to be +offered to the light and to yonder handful of long sedges and rushes in a +vase. Their slender grey design of shadows upon white walls is better +than a tedious, trivial, or anxious device from the shop. + +The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into line +and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, not to the +mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. It is single; +it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and will never be seen +again, and that, untouched, varies with the journey of the sun, shifts +the interrelation of a score of delicate lines at the mere passing of +time, though all the room be motionless. Why will design insist upon its +importunate immortality? Wiser is the drama, and wiser the dance, that +do not pause upon an attitude. But these walk with passion or pleasure, +while the shadow walks with the earth. It alters as the hours wheel. + +Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it is shed +by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; it betrays +the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies--a sun that takes the +midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a sally-porte, and is +about to alight on an unused horizon. So does the grey drawing, with +which you have allowed the sun and your pot of rushes to adorn your room, +play the stealthy game of the year. + +You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It needs but +four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most buoyant +jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a symmetrical +countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches close with one +another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and their paler greys +darkening. It is hard to believe that there are many to prefer a +"repeating pattern." + +It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration the +walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a plaque or a +picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To dress a room once +for all, and to give it no more heed, is to neglect the units of the +days. + +Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of shadows +which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you see little +except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow--be the day bright +enough--compose the very air through which you see the light. The trees +show you a shadow for every leaf, and the poplars are sprinkled upon the +shining sky with little shadows that look translucent. The liveliness of +every shadow is that some light is reflected into it; shade and shine +have been entangled as though by some wild wind through their million +molecules. + +The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the unclouded +sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to life, and are +themselves the life, the action, and the transparence of their day. + +To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light looks +still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide for so many +hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are extinguished. +Him who lies alone there the outer world touches less by this long +sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. Although there may +be no tree to stand between his window and the south, and although no +noonday wind may blow a branch of roses across the blind, shadows and +their life will be carried across by a brilliant bird. + +To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot see +its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does but darken +his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does not see it +pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows him wings. What +flash of light could be more bright for him than such a flash of +darkness? + +It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. If +he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less--the bird's shadow +was a message from the sun. + +There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight of +the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. This goes +across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray for a while +in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer and larger, runs, +quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker on the soft and dry +grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird swoops to a branch and +clings. + +In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, about +Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high birds are the +movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there are no woods to make +a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse of flocks of pearl-white +sea birds, or of the solitary creature driving on the wind. Theirs is +always a surprise of flight. The clouds go one way, but the birds go all +ways: in from the sea or out, across the sands, inland to high northern +fields, where the crops are late by a month. They fly so high that +though they have the shadow of the sun under their wings, they have the +light of the earth there also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, +and they fly between lights. + +Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, "swift as +dreams," at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, and +ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They subside by +degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings and cries until +there comes the general shadow of night wherewith the little shadows +close, complete. + +The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds have traced +wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their shadows have +fled all day faster than her streams, and have overtaken all the movement +of her wingless creatures. But now it is the flight of the very earth +that carries her clasped shadow from the sun. + + + + +THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY + + +All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling and +election to the most wifely of all wifehoods--that of a soldier's +wife--history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as Colonel +Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is something more than +his biographer--his historian. And she convinces her reader that her +Puritan principles kept abreast of her affections. There is no +self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; keeps her own footing; wife of +a soldier as she is, would not have armed him without her own previous +indignation against the enemy. She is a soldier at his orders, but she +had warily and freely chosen her captain. + +Briefly, and with the dignity that the language of her day kept unmarred +for her use, she relates her own childhood and youth. She was a child +such as those serious times desired that a child should be; that is, she +was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, as might be. Childhood, +as an age of progress, was not to be delayed, as an age of imperfection +was to be improved, as an age of inability was not to be exposed except +when precocity distinguished it. It must at any rate be shortened. Lucy +Apsley, at four years old, read English perfectly, and was "carried to +sermons, and could remember and repeat them exactly." "At seven she had +eight tutors in several qualities." She outstripped her brothers in +Latin, albeit they were at school and she had no teacher except her +father's chaplain, who, poor gentleman, was "a pitiful dull fellow." She +was not companionable. Her many friends were indulged with "babies" +(that is, dolls) and these she pulled to pieces. She exhorted the maids, +she owned, "much." But she also heard much of their love stories, and +acquired a taste for sonnets. + +It was a sonnet, and indeed one of her own writing, that brought about +her acquaintance with Mr. Hutchinson. The sonnet was read to him, and +discussed amongst his friends, with guesses at the authorship; for a +young woman did not, in that world, write a sonnet without a feint of +hiding its origin. One gentleman believed a woman had made it. Another +said, if so, there were but two women capable of making it; but he owned, +later, that he said "two" out of civility (very good civility of a kind +that is not now practised) to a lady who chanced to be present; but that +he knew well there was but one; and he named her. From her future +husband Lucy Apsley received that praise of exceptions wherewith women +are now, and always will be, praised: "Mr. Hutchinson," she says, +"fancying something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary +reach of a she-wit, could scarcely believe it was a woman's." + +He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured +conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young +friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy +than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in +setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of +her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity +did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set head of hair" in +long locks that were an offence to many of his own sect, but, she says, +"a great ornament to him." But for herself she has some dissimulated +vanities. She was negligent of dress, and when, after much waiting and +many devices, her suitor first saw her, she was "not ugly in a careless +riding-habit." As for him, "in spite of all her indifference, she was +surprised (she writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw +this gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to +beget love in any one." He married her as soon as she could leave her +chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that "the priest and all +that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God recompensed his +justice and constancy by restoring her." + +The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy +Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our own +time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of gesture +of language; this is where she praises her husband's "handsome management +of love." {1} She thus prefaces her description of her honoured lord: "If +my treacherous memory have not lost the dearest treasure that ever I +committed to its trust--." She boasts of her country in lofty phrase: +"God hath, as it were, enclosed a people here, out of the waste common of +the world." And again of her husband: "It will be as hard to say which +was the predominant virtue in him as which is so in its own nature." "He +had made up his accounts with life and death, and fixed his purpose to +entertain both honourably." "The heat of his youth a little inclined him +to the passion of anger, and the goodness of his nature to those of love +and grief; but reason was never dethroned by them, but continued governor +and moderator of his soul." + +She describes sweetly certain three damsels who had "conceived a +kindness" for her lord, their susceptibility, their willingness, their +"admirable tempting beauty," and "such excellent good-nature as would +have thawed a rock of ice"; but she adds no less beautifully, "It was not +his time to love." In her widowhood she remembered that she had been +commanded "not to grieve at the common rate of women"; and this is the +lovely phrase of her grief: "As his shadow, she waited on him everywhere, +till he was taken to that region of light which admits of none, and then +she vanished into nothing." + +She has an invincible anger against the enemies of her husband and of the +cause. The fevers, "little less than plagues," that were common in that +age carry them off exemplarily by families at a time. An adversary is +"the devil's exquisite solicitor." All Royalists are of "the wicked +faction." She suspected his warders of poisoning Colonel Hutchinson in +the prison wherein he died. The keeper had given him, under pretence of +kindness, a bottle of excellent wine, and the two gentlemen who drank of +it died within four months. A poison of strange operation! "We must +leave it to the great day, when all crimes, how secret soever, will be +made manifest, whether they added poison to all their other iniquity, +whereby they certainly murdered this guiltless servant of God." When he +was near death, she adds, "a gentlewoman of the Castle came up and asked +him how he did. He told her, Incomparably well, and full of faith." + +On the subject of politics, Mrs. Hutchinson writes, it must be owned, +platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with dignity. Her +power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the liberal and public +interests of her life, her good breeding, her education, her exquisite +diction, are such as may well make a reader ask how and why the +literature of England declined upon the vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, +foolishness, that became "feminine" in the estimation of a later age; +that is, in the character of women succeeding her, and in the estimation +of men succeeding her lord. The noble graces of Lucy Hutchinson, I say, +may well make us marvel at the downfall following--at Goldsmith's +invention of the women of "The Vicar or Wakefield" in one age, and at +Thackeray's invention of the women of "Esmond" in another. + +Mrs. Hutchinson has little leisure for much praise of the natural beauty +of sky and landscape, but now and then in her work there appears an +abiding sense of the pleasantness of the rural world--in her day an +implicit feeling rather than an explicit. "The happiness of the soil and +air contribute all things that are necessary to the use or delight of +man's life." "He had an opportunity of conversing with her in those +pleasant walks which, at the sweet season of the spring, invited all the +neighbouring inhabitants to seek their joys." And she describes a dream +whereof the scene was in the green fields of Southwark. What an England +was hers! And what an English! A memorable vintage of our literature +and speech was granted in her day; we owe much to those who--as she +did--gathered it in. + + + + +MRS. DINGLEY + + +We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {2} All we have to call +her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties her to Stella, with +whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved "better a thousand times +than life, as hope saved." MD, without full stops, Swift writes it eight +times in a line for the pleasure of writing it. "MD sometimes means +Stella alone," says one of many editors. "The letters were written +nominally to Stella and Mrs. Dingley," says another, "but it does not +require to be said that it was really for Stella's sake alone that they +were penned." Not so. "MD" never stands for Stella alone. And the +editor does not yet live who shall persuade one honest reader, against +the word of Swift, that Swift loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, +and not, by a most delicate exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that +they make the "she" and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper +of reparation to Mrs. Dingley. + +No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. In +love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; and Dingley's half +of the tender things said to MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing +from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimentalist has fought +against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her, +misconceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimentalist--he finds her +irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but +lately called her a "chaperon." A chaperon! + +MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been +pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this respect +been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy charming MD," +"saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys mine," "little +mischievous girls," "nautinautinautidear girls," "brats," "huzzies both," +"impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," "my dearest lives and +delights," "dear little young women," "good dallars, not crying dallars" +(which means "girls"), "ten thousand times dearest MD," and so forth in a +hundred repetitions. They are, every now and then, "poor MD," but +obviously not because of their own complaining. Swift called them so +because they were mortal; and he, like all great souls, lived and loved, +conscious every day of the price, which is death. + +The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with his +summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately put them +asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than foolishly play +havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the most secluded thing in +the world. "I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters, +except MD's;" "I ought to read these letters I write after I have done. +But I hope it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: +but methinks," he adds, "when I write plain, I do not know how, but we +are not alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it +looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you +must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us +happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may +never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." "Farewell, +dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one happy +day since he left you, as hope saved." + +With them--with her--he hid himself in the world, at Court, at the bar of +St. James's coffee-house, whither he went on the Irish mail-day, and was +"in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting." He hid with them in the +long labours of these exquisite letters every night and morning. If no +letter came, he comforted himself with thinking that "he had it yet to be +happy with." And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold and +lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity--the distinction--of this +sweet romance. "Little, sequestered pleasure-house"--it seemed as though +"the many could not miss it," but not even the few have found it. + +It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella should +be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift. But day +and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's little letters; he +waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of journal, and when it is +full I will send it whether MD writes or not; and so that will be +pretty." "Naughty girls that will not write to a body!" "I wish you +were whipped for forgetting to send. Go, be far enough, negligent +baggages." "You, Mistress Stella, shall write your share, and then comes +Dingley altogether, and then Stella a little crumb at the end; and then +conclude with something handsome and genteel, as 'your most humble +cumdumble.'" But Scott and Macaulay and Thackeray are all exceedingly +sorry for Stella. + +Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: "Here +is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I must be writing +every night; O Lord, O Lord!" "I must go write idle things, and twittle +twattle." "These saucy jades take up so much of my time with writing to +them in the morning." Is it not a stealthy wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley +that she should be stripped of all these ornaments to her name and +memory? When Swift tells a woman in a letter that there he is "writing +in bed, like a tiger," she should go gay in the eyes of all generations. + +They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will not +let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. Marry come up! +Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages (taken very +seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, then? That would +have been no ill share for Dingley. But no, forsooth, Dingley is allowed +nothing. + +There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from her. For +now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does so he invariably +drops those initials and writes "Stella" or "Ppt" for the one, and "D" or +"Dingley" for the other. There is no exception to this anywhere. He is +anxious about Stella's "little eyes," and about her health generally; +whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he thinks, will not catch the "new +fever," because she is not well; "but why should D escape it, pray?" And +Mrs. Dingley is rebuked for her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. +"I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not +so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers." Stella is often reproved for her +spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. But she is a +puzzle-headed woman, like another. "What do you mean by my fourth +letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella say you had my fifth, goody +Blunder?" "Now, Mistress Dingley, are you not an impudent slut to except +a letter next packet? Unreasonable baggage! No, little Dingley, I am +always in bed by twelve, and I take great care of myself." "You are a +pretending slut, indeed, with your 'fourth' and 'fifth' in the margin, +and your 'journal' and everything. O Lord, never saw the like, we shall +never have done." "I never saw such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, +so everything." Swift is insistently grateful for their inquiries for +his health. He pauses seriously to thank them in the midst of his +prattle. Both women--MD--are rallied on their politics: "I have a fancy +that Ppt is a Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort of trimmer." + +But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in his +lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her in Ireland. +"He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible litter; but I say +nothing; I am as tame as a clout." + +Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the ignominy, in +a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to Swift as an unclaimed +wife; so far so good. But two hundred years is long for her to have gone +stripped of so radiant a glory as is hers by right. "Better, thanks to +MD's prayers," wrote the immortal man who loved her, in a private +fragment of a journal, never meant for Dingley's eyes, nor for Ppt's, nor +for any human eyes; and the rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all +the credit of those prayers, and all the thanks of that pious +benediction. + + + + +PRUE + + +Through the long history of human relations, which is the history of the +life of our race, there sounds at intervals the clamour of a single voice +which has not the tone of oratory, but asks, answers, interrupts itself, +interrupts--what else? Whatever else it interrupts is silence; there are +pauses, but no answers. There is the jest without the laugh, and again +the laugh without the jest. And this is because the letters written by +Madame de Sevigne were all saved, and not many written to her; because +Swift burnt the letters that were the dearest things in life to him, +while "MD" both made a treasury of his; and because Prue kept all the +letters which Steele wrote to her from their marriage-day onwards, and +Steele kept none of hers. + +In Swift's case the silence is full of echoes; that is to say, his +letters repeat the phrases of Stella's and Dingley's, to play with them, +flout them, and toss them back against the two silenced voices. He never +lets the word of these two women fall to the ground; and when they have +but blundered with it, and aimed it wide, and sent it weakly, he will +catch it, and play you twenty delicate and expert juggling pranks with it +as he sends it back into their innocent faces. So we have something of +MD's letters in the "journal," and this in the only form in which we +desire them, to tell the truth; for when Swift gravely saves us some +specimens of Stella's wit, after her death, as she spoke them, and not as +he mimicked them, they make a sorry show. + +In many correspondences, where one voice remains and the other is gone, +the retort is enough for two. It is as when, the other day, the half of +a pretty quarrel between nurse and child came down from an upper floor to +the ears of a mother who decided that she need not interfere. The voice +of the undaunted child it was that was audible alone, and it replied, +"I'm not; _you_ are"; and anon, "I'll tell _yours_." Nothing was really +missing there. + +But Steele's letters to Prue, his wife, are no such simple matter. The +turn we shall give them depends upon the unheard tone whereto they reply. +And there is room for conjecture. It has pleased the more modern of the +many spirits of banter to supply Prue's eternal silence with the voice of +a scold. It is painful to me to complain of Thackeray; but see what a +figure he makes of Prue in "Esmond." It is, says the nineteenth-century +humourist, in defence against the pursuit of a jealous, exacting, +neglected, or evaded wife that poor Dick Steele sends those little notes +of excuse: "Dearest Being on earth, pardon me if you do not see me till +eleven o'clock, having met a schoolfellow from India"; "My dear, dear +wife, I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged +to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account +(when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient +husband"; "Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your +welfare"; "I stay here in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for me, +and shall dine with him to that end"; and so forth. Once only does +Steele really afford the recent humourist the suggestion that is +apparently always so welcome. It is when he writes that he is invited to +supper to Mr. Boyle's, and adds: "Dear Prue, do not send after me, for I +shall be ridiculous." But even this is to be read not ungracefully by a +well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused to the world. Her +husband, by the way, had been already married; and his greater age makes +his constant deference all the more charming. + +But with this one exception, Steele's little notes, kept by his wife +while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter and his, +are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. It is +worth while to remember that Steele's dinner, which it was so often +difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore of mid- +business. But that is a detail. What is desirable is that a reasonable +degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; for it is no more than +just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: "How often has your +tenderness removed pain from my aching head, how often anguish from my +afflicted heart. If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are +thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in +inclination, or more charming in form, than my wife." + +True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; and +these carry to her his assurance that she is "the beautifullest object in +the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to +the pleasure I have in your person and society." "But indeed, though you +have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which almost +frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that you do not love to +dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me proud +of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine." The +correction of the phrase is finely considerate. + +Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a reply, +full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a little +flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence of +uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with what +simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her invitation, +and perform! She wanted a compliment, though they had been long married +then, and he immediately turned it. This was no dowdy Prue. + +Her request, by the way, which he repeats in obeying it, is one of the +few instances of the other side of the correspondence--one of the few +direct echoes of that one of the two voices which is silent. + +The ceremony of the letters and the deferent method of address and +signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. It +is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and state is +supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of the husband +of farce, the "rogue." One does not like the word. Is it not clownish +to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? He did not pay, he +was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, he did many other +things that tarnish honour, more or less, and things for which he had to +beg Prue's special pardon; but yet he is not a fit subject for the +unhandsome incredulity which is proud to be always at hand with an ironic +commentary on such letters as his. + +I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words. He +wrote to Prue at night when the burgundy had been too much for him, and +in the morning after. He announces that he is coming to her "within a +pint of wine." One of his gayest letters--a love-letter before the +marriage, addressed to "dear lovely Mrs. Scurlock"--confesses candidly +that he had been pledging her too well: "I have been in very good +company, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved +best, has been often drunk; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for +your sake, which is more than _I die for you_." + +Steele obviously drank burgundy wildly, as did his "good company"; as did +also the admirable Addison, who was so solitary in character and so +serene in temperament. But no one has, for this fault, the right to put +a railing accusation into the mouth of Prue. Every woman has a right to +her own silence, whether her silence be hers of set purpose or by +accident. And every creature has a right to security from the banterings +peculiar to the humourists of a succeeding age. To every century its own +ironies, to every century its own vulgarities. In Steele's time they had +theirs. They might have rallied Prue more coarsely, but it would have +been with a different rallying. Writers of the nineteenth century went +about to rob her of her grace. + +She kept some four hundred of these little letters of her lord's. It was +a loyal keeping. But what does Thackeray call it? His word is +"thrifty." He says: "There are four hundred letters of Dick Steele's to +his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately." + +"Thrifty" is a hard word to apply to her whom Steele styled, in the year +before her death, his "charming little insolent." She was ill in Wales, +and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and "took it to be a sin to go to +sleep." Thrifty they may call her, and accurate if they will; but she +lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele called her "your Prueship." + + + + +MRS. JOHNSON + + +This paper shall not be headed "Tetty." What may be a graceful enough +freedom with the wives of other men shall be prohibited in the case of +Johnson's, she with whose name no writer until now has scrupled to take +freedoms whereto all graces were lacking. "Tetty" it should not be, if +for no other reason, for this--that the chance of writing "Tetty" as a +title is a kind of facile literary opportunity; it shall be denied. The +Essay owes thus much amends of deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. +But, indeed, the reason is graver. What wish would he have had but that +the language in the making whereof he took no ignoble part should +somewhere, at some time, treat his only friend with ordinary honour? + +Men who would trust Dr. Johnson with their orthodoxy, with their +vocabulary, and with the most intimate vanity of their human wishes, +refuse, with every mark of insolence, to trust him in regard to his wife. +On that one point no reverence is paid to him, no deference, no respect, +not so much as the credit due to our common sanity. Yet he is not +reviled on account of his Thrale--nor, indeed, is his Thrale now +seriously reproached for her Piozzi. It is true that Macaulay, preparing +himself and his reader "in his well-known way" (as a rustic of Mr. +Hardy's might have it) for the recital of her second marriage, says that +it would have been well if she had been laid beside the kind and generous +Thrale when, in the prime of her life, he died. But Macaulay has not +left us heirs to his indignation. His well-known way was to exhaust +those possibilities of effect in which the commonplace is so rich. And +he was permitted to point his paragraphs as he would, not only by calling +Mrs. Thrale's attachment to her second husband "a degrading passion," but +by summoning a chorus of "all London" to the same purpose. She fled, he +tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen +to a land where she was unknown. Thus when Macaulay chastises Mrs. +Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is not inconsistent, for he +pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for her audacity in keeping gaiety +and grace in her mind and manners longer than Macaulay liked to see such +ornaments added to the charm of twice "married brows." + +It is not so with succeeding essayists. One of these minor biographers +is so gentle as to call the attachment of Mrs. Thrale and Piozzi "a +mutual affection." He adds, "No one who has had some experience of life +will be inclined to condemn Mrs. Thrale." But there is no such courtesy, +even from him, for Mrs. Johnson. Neither to him nor to any other writer +has it yet occurred that if England loves her great Englishman's memory, +she owes not only courtesy, but gratitude, to the only woman who loved +him while there was yet time. + +Not a thought of that debt has stayed the alacrity with which a +caricature has been acclaimed as the only possible portrait of Mrs. +Johnson. Garrick's school reminiscences would probably have made a much +more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his remembrances; +we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of envying those who heard +him. But honest laughter should not fall into that tone of common +antithesis which seems to say, "See what are the absurdities of the +great! Such is life! On this one point we, even we, are wiser than Dr. +Johnson--we know how grotesque was his wife. We know something of the +privacies of her toilet-table. We are able to compare her figure with +the figures we, unlike him in his youth, have had the opportunity of +admiring--the figures of the well-bred and well-dressed." It is a sorry +success to be able to say so much. + +But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, at +twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over himself +which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, a woman who +had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite of first sight. +"That," she said to her daughter, "is the most sensible man I ever met." +He was penniless. She had what was no mean portion for those times and +those conditions; and, granted that she was affected, and provincial, and +short, and all the rest with which she is charged, she was probably not +without suitors; nor do her defects or faults seem to have been those of +an unadmired or neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the +aspect of Johnson's form and face, even in his twenties, and how little +he could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. This one +loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the noblest of +all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. And English +literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay's--"She +accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses of +a suitor who might have been her son." + +Her readiness did her incalculable honour. But it is at last worth +remembering that Johnson had first done her incalculable honour. No one +has given to man or woman the right to judge as to the worthiness of her +who received it. The meanest man is generally allowed his own counsel as +to his own wife; one of the greatest of men has been denied it. "The +lover," says Macaulay, "continued to be under the illusions of the +wedding day till the lady died." What is so graciously said is not +enough. He was under those "illusions" until he too died, when he had +long passed her latest age, and was therefore able to set right that +balance of years which has so much irritated the impertinent. Johnson +passed from this life twelve years older than she, and so for twelve +years his constant eyes had to turn backwards to dwell upon her. Time +gave him a younger wife. + +And here I will put into Mrs. Johnson's mouth, that mouth to which no one +else has ever attributed any beautiful sayings, the words of Marceline +Desbordes-Valmore to the young husband she loved: "Older than thou! Let +me never see thou knowest it. Forget it! I will remember it, to die +before thy death." + +Macaulay, in his unerring effectiveness, uses Johnson's short sight for +an added affront to Mrs. Johnson. The bridegroom was too weak of +eyesight "to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom." Nevertheless, he +saw well enough, when he was old, to distinguish Mrs. Thrale's dresses. +He reproved her for wearing a dark dress; it was unsuitable, he said, for +her size; a little creature should show gay colours "like an insect." We +are not called upon to admire his wife; why, then, our taste being thus +uncompromised, do we not suffer him to admire her? It is the most +gratuitous kind of intrusion. Moreover, the biographers are eager to +permit that touch of romance and grace in his relations to Mrs. Thrale, +which they officially deny in the case of Mrs. Johnson. But the +difference is all on the other side. He would not have bidden his wife +dress like an insect. Mrs. Thrale was to him "the first of womankind" +only because his wife was dead. + +Beauclerc, we learn, was wont to cap Garrick's mimicry of Johnson's love- +making by repeating the words of Johnson himself in after-years--"It was +a love-match on both sides." And obviously he was as strange a lover as +they said. Who doubted it? Was there any other woman in England to give +such a suitor the opportunity of an eternal love? "A life radically +wretched," was the life of this master of Letters; but she, who has +received nothing in return except ignominy from these unthankful Letters, +had been alone to make it otherwise. Well for him that he married so +young as to earn the ridicule of all the biographers in England; for by +doing so he, most happily, possessed his wife for nearly twenty years. I +have called her his only friend. So indeed she was, though he had +followers, disciples, rivals, competitors, and companions, many degrees +of admirers, a biographer, a patron, and a public. He had also the +houseful of sad old women who quarrelled under his beneficent protection. +But what friend had he? He was "solitary" from the day she died. + +Let us consider under what solemn conditions and in what immortal phrase +the word "solitary" stands. He wrote it, all Englishmen know where. He +wrote it in the hour of that melancholy triumph when he had been at last +set free from the dependence upon hope. He hoped no more, and he needed +not to hope. The "notice" of Lord Chesterfield had been too long +deferred; it was granted at last, when it was a flattery which Johnson's +court of friends would applaud. But not for their sake was it welcome. +To no living ear would he bring it and report it with delight. + +He was indifferent, he was known. The sensitiveness to pleasure was +gone, and the sensitiveness to pain, slights, and neglect would +thenceforth be suffered to rest; no man in England would put that to +proof again. No man in England, did I say? But, indeed, that is not so. +No slight to him, to his person, or to his fame could have had power to +cause him pain more sensibly than the customary, habitual, ready-made +ridicule that has been cast by posterity upon her whom he loved for +twenty years, prayed for during thirty-two years more, who satisfied one +of the saddest human hearts, but to whom the world, assiduous to admire +him, hardly accords human dignity. He wrote praises of her manners and +of her person for her tomb. But her epitaph, that does not name her, is +in the greatest of English prose. What was favour to him? "I am +indifferent . . . I am known . . . I am solitary, and cannot impart it." + + + + +MADAME ROLAND + + +The articulate heroine has her reward of appreciation and her dues of +praise; it is her appropriate fortune to have it definitely measured, and +generally on equal terms. She takes pains to explain herself, and is +understood, and pitied, when need is, on the right occasions. For +instance, Madame Roland, a woman of merit, who knew her "merit's name and +place," addressed her memoirs, her studies in contemporary history, her +autobiography, her many speeches, and her last phrase at the foot of the +undaunting scaffold, to a great audience of her equals (more or less) +then living and to live in the ages then to come--her equals and those +she raises to her own level, as the heroic example has authority to do. + +Another woman--the Queen--suffered at that time, and suffered without the +command of language, the exactitude of phrase, the precision of +judgement, the proffer of prophecy, the explicit sense of Innocence and +Moderation oppressed in her person. These were Madame Roland's; but the +other woman, without eloquence, without literature, and without any +judicial sense of history, addresses no mere congregation of readers. +Marie Antoinette's unrecorded pangs pass into the treasuries of the +experience of the whole human family. All that are human have some part +there; genius itself may lean in contemplation over that abyss of woe; +the great poets themselves may look into its distances and solitudes. +Compassion here has no measure and no language. Madame Roland speaks +neither to genius nor to complete simplicity; Marie Antoinette holds her +peace in the presence of each, dumb in her presence. + +Madame Roland had no dumbness of the spirit, as history, prompted by her +own musical voice, presents her to a world well prepared to do her +justice. Of that justice she had full expectation; justice here, justice +in the world--the world that even when universal philosophy should reign +would be inevitably the world of mediocrity; justice that would come of +enlightened views; justice that would be the lesson learnt by the nations +widely educated up to some point generally accessible; justice well +within earthly sight and competence. This confidence was also her +reward. For what justice did the Queen look? Here it is the "abyss that +appeals to the abyss." + +Twice only in the life of Madame Roland is there a lapse into silence, +and for the record of these two poor failures of that long, indomitable, +reasonable, temperate, explicit utterance which expressed her life and +mind we are debtors to her friends. She herself has not confessed them. +Nowhere else, whether in her candid history of herself, or in her wise +history of her country, or in her judicial history of her contemporaries, +whose spirit she discerned, whose powers she appraised, whose errors she +foresaw; hardly in her thought, and never in her word, is a break to be +perceived; she is not silent and she hardly stammers; and when she tells +us of her tears--the tears of youth only--her record is voluble and all +complete. For the dignity of her style, of her force, and of her +balanced character, Madame Roland would doubtless have effaced the two +imperfections which, to us who would be glad to admire in silence her +heroic figure, if that heroic figure would but cease to talk, are finer +and more noble than her well-placed language and the high successes of +her decision and her endurance. More than this, the two failures of this +unfailing woman are two little doors opened suddenly into those wider +spaces and into that dominion of solitude which, after all, do doubtless +exist even in the most garrulous soul. By these two outlets Manon Roland +also reaches the region of Marie Antoinette. But they befell her at the +close of her life, and they shall be named at the end of this brief +study. + +Madame Roland may seem the more heroic to those whose suffrages she seeks +in all times and nations because of the fact that she manifestly +suppresses in her self-descriptions any signs of a natural gaiety. Her +memoirs give evidence of no such thing; it is only in her letters, not +intended for the world, that we are aware of the inadvertence of moments. +We may overhear a laugh at times, but not in those consciously sprightly +hours that she spent with her convent-school friend gathering fruit and +counting eggs at the farm. She pursued these country tasks not without +offering herself the cultivated congratulation of one whom cities had +failed to allure, and who bore in mind the examples of Antiquity. She +did not forget the death of Socrates. Or, rather, she finds an occasion +to reproach herself with having once forgotten it, and with having +omitted what another might have considered the tedious recollection of +the condemnation of Phocion. She never wearied of these examples. But +it is her inexhaustible freshness in these things that has helped other +writers of her time to weary us. + +In her manner of telling her story there is an absence of all +exaggeration, which gives the reader a constant sense of security. That +virtue of style and thought was one she proposed to herself and attained +with exact consciousness of success. It would be almost enough (in the +perfection of her practice) to make a great writer; even a measure of it +goes far to make a fair one. Her moderation of statement is never +shaken; and if she now and then glances aside from her direct narrative +road to hazard a conjecture, the error she may make is on the generous +side of hope and faith. For instance, she is too sure that her Friends +(so she always calls the _Girondins_, using no nicknames) are safe, +whereas they were then all doomed; a young man who had carried a harmless +message for her--a mere notification to her family of her arrest--receives +her cheerful commendation for his good feeling; from a note we learn that +for this action he suffered on the scaffold and that his father soon +thereafter died of grief. But Madame Roland never matched such a +delirious event as this by any delirium of her own imagination. The +delirium was in things and in the acts of men; her mind was never hurried +from its sane self-possession, when the facts raved. + +It was only when she used the rhetoric ready to her hand that she stooped +to verbal violence; _et encore_! References to the banishment of +Aristides and the hemlock of Socrates had become toy daggers and bending +swords in the hands of her compatriots, and she is hardly to be accused +of violence in brandishing those weapons. Sometimes, refuse rhetoric +being all too ready, she takes it on her pen, in honest haste, as though +it were honest speech, and stands committed to such a phrase as this: +"The dregs of the nation placed such a one at the helm of affairs." + +But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and +efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, but +without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity is +somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In "Bleak +House" there is an old lady who insisted that the name "Mr. Turveydrop," +as it appeared polished on the door-plate of the dancing master, was the +name of the pretentious father and not of the industrious son--albeit, +needless to say, one name was common to them. With equal severity I aver +that when Madame Roland wrote to her husband in the second person +singular she was using the _tu_ of Rome and not the _tu_ of Paris. French +was indeed the language; but had it been French in spirit she would (in +spite of the growing Republican fashion) have said _vous_ to this "homme +eclaire, de moeurs pures, a qui l'on ne peut reprocher que sa grande +admiration pour les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le +faible de trop aimer a parler de lui." There was no French _tu_ in her +relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, discreetly +rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports she wrote, and +whom she observed as he slowly began to think he himself had composed +them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, and discriminating +affection, and when she had been put to death, he, still at liberty, fell +upon his sword. + +This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent the +exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take opium in +the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she chose that those +who oppressed her country should have their way with her to the last. +But, while still intending self-destruction, she had written to her +husband: "Forgive me, respectable man, for disposing of a life that I had +consecrated to thee." In quoting this I mean to make no too-easy effect +with the word "respectable," grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our +own present fashion of speech. + +Madame Roland, I have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two spaces of +silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had heard her +condemnation to death. Passing out of the court she beckoned to her +friends, and signified to them her sentence "by a gesture." And again +there was a pause, in the course of her last days, during which her +speeches had not been few, and had been spoken with her beautiful voice +unmarred; "she leant," says Riouffe, "alone against her window, and wept +there three hours." + + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed +of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the preoccupations. You +cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, do not +compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not the tone, but +the note alters. So with the uncovenanted ways of a child you keep no +tryst. They meet you at another place, after failing you where you +tarried; your former experiences, your documents are at fault. You are +the fellow traveller of a bird. The bird alights and escapes out of time +to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of four +years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the sweet and +unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with your loving dolls." +A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to come down from the heights +and play with him on the floor, but sensible, perhaps, that there was a +dignity to be observed none the less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a +lady frog." None ever said their good things before these indeliberate +authors. Even their own kind--children--have not preceded them. No +child in the past ever found the same replies as the girl of five whose +father made that appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, +perverse, and unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and +had a mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy things +for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely puddin's?" Yes, +even for these. The subject must have seemed to her to be worth +pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been drowned in +the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that she should +forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay subject--her +wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, "what I should +like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a whistle!" Her mother +was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer +as to the dolls. But the whistle seemed practicable. "It is for me to +whistle for cabs," said the child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go +to parties." Another morning she came down radiant. "Did you hear a +great noise in the miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried +because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his +nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, nothing +feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than you," is the word +of a very young egotist. An older child says, "I'd better go, bettern't +I, mother?" He calls a little space at the back of a London house, "the +backy-garden." A little creature proffers almost daily the reminder at +luncheon--at tart-time: "Father, I hope you will remember that I am the +favourite of the crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent +the naif things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, +he would hardly light upon the device of the little _troupe_ who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of candle-shades. + +"It's _jolly_ dull without you, mother," says a little girl who--gentlest +of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she makes no +secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her feats of +metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are involuntary: the +"stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing chamine." Genoese +peasants have the same prank when they try to speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they should +by any means have an impression of the country or the sea annually. A +London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows it with her +pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who wants to play +with a bronze Japanese lobster, asks "Will you please let me have that +tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the most +touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to save him. +How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of the "saving" of +other things of interest--especially chocolate creams taken for +safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me to-day? Nurse is +going out, will you save me, mother?" The same little variant upon +common use is in another child's courteous reply to a summons to help in +the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, was +taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different standing from +her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a Saturday Reviewer. As +he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the town unknown to her, she +noted with interest the shops of the neighbourhood as she went, for they +might be those of the _fournisseurs_ of her friend. "That is his bread +shop, and that is his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, +with even heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming _parterre_ of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I suppose, +is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is intent +upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We have all +heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, of collecting +cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a joy that costs her +nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names over all +shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. "I began three weeks +ago next Monday, mother," she says with precision, "and I have got thirty- +nine." "Thirty-nine what?" "Smiths." + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like collecting +together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, single of their +kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and that is the +rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported +them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are +you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have +nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it +raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up +and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered for +her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, and with +some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she took no +pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her friend. He +had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of Heaven, and the +decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, and of her hair--"a +brown tress." She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and +she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of +Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The +unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase +for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said, +more or less after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the years +of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current word into +use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to save the +interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly detected, in +children old enough to show their motives, a conviction that a word of +their own making is as good a communication as another, and as +intelligible. There is even a general implicit conviction among them +that the grown-up people, too, make words by the wayside as occasion +befalls. How otherwise should words be so numerous that every day brings +forward some hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he thinks to +belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out of a +child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much +confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything +strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts +genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first sight of +sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without allowing +himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, "summersets." This was +simple and unexpected; so was the comment of a sister a very little +older. "Why does he call those flowers summersets?" their mother said; +and the girl, with a darkly brilliant look of humour and penetration, +answered, "because they are so big." There seemed to be no further +question possible after an explanation that was presented thus charged +with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, somewhat +at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases hazarded to express +a meaning well realized--a personal matter. Questioned as to the eating +of an uncertain number of buns just before lunch, the child averred, "I +took them just to appetize my hunger." As she betrayed a familiar +knowledge of the tariff of an attractive confectioner, she was asked +whether she and her sisters had been frequenting those little tables on +their way from school. "I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; +"but I generally speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. Dryden +does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer passages. But +sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite intelligible to elders. +Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother who had, it seems, +allowed her family to see that she was inclined to be satisfied with +something of her own writing. The child has a full and gay sense of the +sweetest kinds of irony. There was no need for her to write, she and her +mother being both at home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy +of a pen:--"My dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that +article, if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not +write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister, +and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew just how old she +is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They can see she is +pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children who in +time betray a little consciousness and a slight _mefiance_ as to where +the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, obscure. These +children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking in their talk, +but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word of which they do +not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness was barely enough +to cause her to stop to choose between two words, was wont to bring a cup +of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who had often feigned +indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the +infusion." "I'm afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and +then, in a half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not +told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + + +THE CHILD OF TUMULT + + +A poppy bud, packed into tight bundles by so hard and resolute a hand +that the petals of the flower never afterwards lose the creases, is a +type of the child. Nothing but the unfolding, which is as yet in the non- +existing future, can explain the manner of the close folding of +character. In both flower and child it looks much as though the process +had been the reverse of what it was--as though a finished and open thing +had been folded up into the bud--so plainly and certainly is the future +implied, and the intention of compressing and folding-close made +manifest. + +With the other incidents of childish character, the crowd of impulses +called "naughtiness" is perfectly perceptible--it would seem heartless to +say how soon. The naughty child (who is often an angel of tenderness and +charm, affectionate beyond the capacity of his fellows, and a very +ascetic of penitence when the time comes) opens early his brief campaigns +and raises the standard of revolt as soon as he is capable of the +desperate joys of disobedience. + +But even the naughty child is an individual, and must not be treated in +the mass. He is numerous indeed, but not general, and to describe him +you must take the unit, with all his incidents and his organic qualities +as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty child in the reality +of his life. He is but six years old, slender and masculine, and not +wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate dress. His face is delicate +and too often haggard with tears of penitence that Justice herself would +be glad to spare him. Some beauty he has, and his mouth especially is so +lovely as to seem not only angelic but itself an angel. He has +absolutely no self-control and his passions find him without defence. +They come upon him in the midst of his usual brilliant gaiety and cut +short the frolic comedy of his fine spirits. + +Then for a wild hour he is the enemy of the laws. If you imprison him, +you may hear his resounding voice as he takes a running kick at the door, +shouting his justification in unconquerable rage. "I'm good now!" is +made as emphatic as a shot by the blow of his heel upon the panel. But +if the moment of forgiveness is deferred, in the hope of a more promising +repentance, it is only too likely that he will betake himself to a +hostile silence and use all the revenge yet known to his imagination. +"Darling mother, open the door!" cries his touching voice at last; but if +the answer should be "I must leave you for a short time, for punishment," +the storm suddenly thunders again. "There (crash!) I have broken a +plate, and I'm glad it is broken into such little pieces that you can't +mend it. I'm going to break the 'lectric light." When things are at +this pass there is one way, and only one, to bring the child to an +overwhelming change of mind; but it is a way that would be cruel, used +more than twice or thrice in his whole career of tempest and defiance. +This is to let him see that his mother is troubled. "Oh, don't cry! Oh, +don't be sad!" he roars, unable still to deal with his own passionate +anger, which is still dealing with him. With his kicks of rage he +suddenly mingles a dance of apprehension lest his mother should have +tears in her eyes. Even while he is still explicitly impenitent and +defiant he tries to pull her round to the light that he may see her face. +It is but a moment before the other passion of remorse comes to make +havoc of the helpless child, and the first passion of anger is quelled +outright. + +Only to a trivial eye is there nothing tragic in the sight of these great +passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a word, the +small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a little nature, and +the stage is too narrow for the action of a tragedy, the disproportion +has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed history of actual life or +sometimes a famous book; it is the manifest core of George Eliot's story +of _Adam Bede_, where the suffering of Hetty is, as it were, the eye of +the storm. All is expressive around her, but she is hardly articulate; +the book is full of words--preachings, speeches, daily talk, aphorisms, +but a space of silence remains about her in the midst of the story. And +the disproportion of passion--the inner disproportion--is at least as +tragic as that disproportion of fate and action; it is less intelligible, +and leads into the intricacies of nature which are more difficult than +the turn of events. + +It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow +limits of a child's nature far oftener than in those of an adult and +finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there is unequal +force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling of powers and +energies that are hurrying to their development and pressing for exercise +and life. It is this helpless inequality--this untimeliness--that makes +the guileless comedy mingling with the tragedies of a poor child's day. +He knows thus much--that life is troubled around him and that the fates +are strong. He implicitly confesses "the strong hours" of antique song. +This same boy--the tempestuous child of passion and revolt--went out with +quiet cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was put on, "Now, +mother, you are going to have a little peace." This way of accepting his +own conditions is shared by a sister, a very little older, who, being of +an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to violence of every kind and +tender to all without disquiet, observes the boy's brief frenzies as a +citizen observes the climate. She knows the signs quite well and can at +any time give the explanation of some particular outburst, but without +any attempt to go in search of further or more original causes. Still +less is she moved by the virtuous indignation that is the least charming +of the ways of some little girls. _Elle ne fait que constater_. +Her equanimity has never been overset by the wildest of his moments, and +she has witnessed them all. It is needless to say that she is not +frightened by his drama, for Nature takes care that her young creatures +shall not be injured by sympathies. Nature encloses them in the innocent +indifference that preserves their brains from the more harassing kinds of +distress. + +Even the very frenzy of rage does not long dim or depress the boy. It is +his repentance that makes him pale, and Nature here has been rather +forced, perhaps--with no very good result. Often must a mother wish that +she might for a few years govern her child (as far as he is governable) +by the lowest motives--trivial punishments and paltry rewards--rather +than by any kind of appeal to his sensibilities. She would wish to keep +the words "right" and "wrong" away from his childish ears, but in this +she is not seconded by her lieutenants. The child himself is quite +willing to close with her plans, in so far as he is able, and is +reasonably interested in the results of her experiments. He wishes her +attempts in his regard to have a fair chance. "Let's hope I'll be good +all to-morrow," he says with the peculiar cheerfulness of his ordinary +voice. "I do hope so, old man." "Then I'll get my penny. Mother, I was +only naughty once yesterday; if I have only one naughtiness to-morrow, +will you give me a halfpenny?" "No reward except for real goodness all +day long." "All right." + +It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the failure +of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one of bribery. +It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all kinds of reward might +not equally be burlesqued by that word, and whether any government, +spiritual or civil, has ever even professed to deny rewards. Moreover, +those who would not give a child a penny for being good will not hesitate +to fine him a penny for being naughty, and rewards and punishments must +stand or fall together. The more logical objection will be that goodness +is ideally the normal condition, and that it should have, therefore, no +explicit extraordinary result, whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, +should have a visible and unusual sequel. To this the rewarding mother +may reply that it is not reasonable to take "goodness" in a little child +of strong passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for him is +to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to overbear his +powers. + +But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. What +is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the weak will +of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a sufficient +resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed as the +passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; but as it is +there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy or fear. Let, +then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at once, and mingled with +the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the suffering of rage and +frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly to make of the little +unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too hurtfully tragic. The penny +is mild and strong at once, with its still distant but certain joys of +purchase; the promise and hope break the mood of misery, and the will +takes heart to resist and conquer. + +It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. The +lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, knowing +herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the father's voice +with a menacing, "What's that noise?" The child was persistently crying +and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy against his French nurse, +when the baritone and threatening question was sent pealing up the +stairs. The child was heard to pause and listen and then to say to his +nurse, "Ce n'est pas Monsieur; c'est Madame," and then, without further +loss of time, to resume the interrupted clamours. + +Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things +mainly to be done--to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the +present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, and to +break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly the special +cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain and anger become +hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for use in the future at +the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight the importance of habit. +Any means, then, that can succeed in separating a little child from the +habit of anger does fruitful work for him in the helpless time of his +childhood. The work is not easy, but a little thought should make it +easy for the elders to avoid the provocation which they--who should ward +off provocations--are apt to bring about by sheer carelessness. It is +only in childhood that our race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow +and tears, as a child's despair; and the theatre with us must needs copy +childhood if it would catch the note and action of a creature without +hope. + + + + +THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT + + +There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the flight of +time; it does so move, and yet withstands time's movement. It is full of +pauses that are due to the energy of change, has bounds and rebounds, and +when it is most active then it is longest. It is not long with languor. +It has room for remoteness, and leisure for oblivion. It takes great +excursions against time, and travels so as to enlarge its hours. This +certain year is any one of the early years of fully conscious life, and +therefore it is of all the dates. The child of Tumult has been living +amply and changefully through such a year--his eighth. It is difficult +to believe that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the adult, +the men who do not breast their days. + +For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of things. +Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men and women +never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a distant light. +There is recognition and familiarity between their seasons. But the +Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his year. Forgetfulness and +surprise set his east and his west at immeasurable distance. His Lethe +runs in the cheerful sun. You look on your own little adult year, and in +imagination enlarge it, because you know it to be the contemporary of +his. Even she who is quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a +strange and great extent of a few years of her life still to come--his +years, the years she is to live at his side. + +Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy's life, not so +much by slow degrees as by sudden and fitful accessions. His speech is +yet so childish that he chooses, for a toy, with blushes of pleasure, "a +little duck what can walk"; but with a beautifully clear accent he greets +his mother with the colloquial question, "Well, darling, do you know the +latest?" "The _what_?" "The latest: do you know the latest?" And then +he tells his news, generally, it must be owned, with some reference to +his own wrongs. On another occasion the unexpected little phrase was +varied; the news of the war then raging distressed him; a thousand of the +side he favoured had fallen. The child then came to his mother's room +with the question: "Have you heard the saddest?" Moreover the "saddest" +caused him several fits of perfectly silent tears, which seized him +during the day, on his walks or at other moments of recollection. From +such great causes arise such little things! Some of his grief was for +the nation he admired, and some was for the triumph of his brother, whose +sympathies were on the other side, and who perhaps did not spare his +sensibilities. + +The tumults of a little child's passions of anger and grief, growing +fewer as he grows older, rather increase than lessen in their +painfulness. There is a fuller consciousness of complete capitulation of +all the childish powers to the overwhelming compulsion of anger. This is +not temptation; the word is too weak for the assault of a child's passion +upon his will. That little will is taken captive entirely, and before +the child was seven he knew that it was so. Such a consciousness leaves +all babyhood behind and condemns the child to suffer. For a certain +passage of his life he is neither unconscious of evil, as he was, nor +strong enough to resist it, as he will be. The time of the subsiding of +the tumult is by no means the least pitiable of the phases of human life. +Happily the recovery from each trouble is ready and sure; so that the +child who had been abandoned to naughtiness with all his will in an +entire consent to the gloomy possession of his anger, and who had later +undergone a haggard repentance, has his captivity suddenly turned again, +"like rivers in the south." "Forget it," he had wept, in a kind of +extremity of remorse; "forget it, darling, and don't, don't be sad;" and +it is he, happily, who forgets. The wasted look of his pale face is +effaced by the touch of a single cheerful thought, and five short minutes +can restore the ruin, as though a broken little German town should in the +twinkling of an eye be restored as no architect could restore it--should +be made fresh, strong, and tight again, looking like a full box of toys, +as a town was wont to look in the new days of old. + +When his ruthless angers are not in possession the child shows the growth +of this tardy reason that--quickened--is hereafter to do so much for his +peace and dignity, by the sweetest consideration. Denied a second +handful of strawberries, and seeing quite clearly that the denial was +enforced reluctantly, he makes haste to reply, "It doesn't matter, +darling." At any sudden noise in the house his beautiful voice, with all +its little difficulties of pronunciation, is heard with the sedulous +reassurance: "It's all right, mother, nobody hurted ourselves!" He is +not surprised so as to forget this gentle little duty, which was never +required of him, but is of his own devising. + +According to the opinion of his dear and admired American friend, he says +all these things, good and evil, with an English accent; and at the +American play his English accent was irrepressible. "It's too comic; no, +it's too comic," he called in his enjoyment; being the only perfectly +fearless child in the world, he will not consent to the conventional +shyness in public, whether he be the member of an audience or of a +congregation, but makes himself perceptible. And even when he has a +desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute revolt--such a thing as +"I _can't_ like you, mother," which anon he will recant with convulsions +of distress--he has to "speak the thing he will," and when he recants it +is not for fear. + +If such a child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for inquisitorial +government could hardly be so much as attempted) by some small means +adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it would be well for his +health, but that seems at times impossible. By no effort can his elders +altogether succeed in keeping tragedy out of the life that is so unready +for it. Against great emotions no one can defend him by any forethought. +He is their subject; and to see him thus devoted and thus wrung, thus +wrecked by tempests inwardly, so that you feel grief has him actually by +the heart, recalls the reluctance--the question--wherewith you perceive +the interior grief of poetry or of a devout life. Cannot the Muse, +cannot the Saint, you ask, live with something less than this? If this +is the truer life, it seems hardly supportable. In like manner it should +be possible for a child of seven to come through his childhood with +griefs that should not so closely involve him, but should deal with the +easier sentiments. + +Despite all his simplicity, the child has (by way of inheritance, for he +has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. Accused of +certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge with any effect, +he flies to the old convention: "I didn't know what I was doing," he +avers, using a great deal of gesticulation to express the temporary +distraction of his mind. "Darling, after nurse slapped me as hard as she +could, I didn't know what I was doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my +foot." His mother knows as well as does Tolstoi that men and children +know what they are doing, and are the more intently aware as the stress +of feeling makes the moments more tense; and she will not admit a plea +which her child might have learned from the undramatic authors he has +never read. + +Far from repenting of her old system of rewards, and far from taking +fright at the name of a bribe, the mother of the Child of Tumult has only +to wish she had at command rewards ample and varied enough to give the +shock of hope and promise to the heart of the little boy, and change his +passion at its height. + + + + +THE UNREADY + + +It is rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They are, on +the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until advancing +age teaches them agility. This is not lack of sensitiveness, but mere +length of process. For instance, a child nearly newly born is cruelly +startled by a sudden crash in the room--a child who has never learnt to +fear, and is merely overcome by the shock of sound; nevertheless, that +shock of sound does not reach the conscious hearing or the nerves but +after some moments, nor before some moments more is the sense of the +shock expressed. The sound travels to the remoteness and seclusion of +the child's consciousness, as the roar of a gun travels to listeners half +a mile away. + +So it is, too, with pain, which has learnt to be so instant and eager +with us of later age that no point of time is lost in its touches--direct +as the unintercepted message of great and candid eyes, unhampered by +trivialities; even so immediate is the communication of pain. But you +could count five between the prick of a surgeon's instrument upon a +baby's arm and the little whimper that answers it. The child is then too +young, also, to refer the feeling of pain to the arm that suffers it. +Even when pain has groped its way to his mind it hardly seems to bring +local tidings thither. The baby does not turn his eyes in any degree +towards his arm or towards the side that is so vexed with vaccination. He +looks in any other direction at haphazard, and cries at random. + +See, too, how slowly the unpractised apprehension of an older child +trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest failure +to take these little _gobe-mouches_ to a good conjurer. His successes +leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it was the good man +meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is who really astonishes +them. They cannot come up even with your amateur beginner, performing at +close quarters; whereas the master of his craft on a platform runs quite +away at the outset from the lagging senses of his honest audience. + +You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under his +ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its place and +off again ten times before the little breathless boy has begun to +perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched. + +Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit of +awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. The simple +little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a common sentence +are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot use two pronouns but +they must confuse them. I never found that a young child--one of +something under nine years--was able to say, "I send them my love" at the +first attempt. It will be "I send me my love," "I send them their love," +"They send me my love"; not, of course, through any confusion of +understanding, but because of the tardy setting of words in order with +the thoughts. The child visibly grapples with the difficulty, and is +beaten. + +It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like twice- +told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They are not eager, +for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If you hide and they +cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is comparatively small; +but let them know perfectly well what cupboard you are in, and they will +find you with shouts of discovery. The better the hiding-place is +understood between you the more lively the drama. They make a convention +of art for their play. The younger the children the more dramatic; and +when the house is filled with outcries of laughter from the breathless +breast of a child, it is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding +his mother where he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that +never tires. Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he +tries to put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for, +if not, he will find that children also have a manner of substitution, +and that they will put half-hearted laughter in the place of their +natural impetuous clamours. It is certain that very young children like +to play upon their own imaginations, and enjoy their own short game. + +There is something so purely childlike in the delays of a child that any +exercise asking for the swift apprehension of later life, for the flashes +of understanding and action, from the mind and members of childhood, is +no pleasure to see. The piano, for instance, as experts understand it, +and even as the moderately-trained may play it, claims all the immediate +action, the instantaneousness, most unnatural to childhood. There may +possibly be feats of skill to which young children could be trained +without this specific violence directed upon the thing characteristic of +their age--their unreadiness--but virtuosity at the piano cannot be one +of them. It is no delight, indeed, to see the shyness of children, or +anything that is theirs, conquered and beaten; but their poor little +slowness is so distinctively their own, and must needs be physiologically +so proper to their years, so much a natural condition of the age of their +brain, that of all childishnesses it is the one that the world should +have the patience to attend upon, the humanity to foster, and the +intelligence to understand. + +It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a very +little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions there are +between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not the brain that +is quick. If, on a voyage in space, electricity takes thus much time, +and light thus much, and sound thus much, there is one little jogging +traveller that would arrive after the others had forgotten their journey, +and this is the perception of a child. Surely our own memories might +serve to remind us how in our childhood we inevitably missed the +principal point in any procession or pageant intended by our elders to +furnish us with a historical remembrance for the future. It was not our +mere vagueness of understanding, it was the unwieldiness of our senses, +of our reply to the suddenness of the grown up. We lived through the +important moments of the passing of an Emperor at a different rate from +theirs; we stared long in the wake of his Majesty, and of anything else +of interest; every flash of movement, that got telegraphic answers from +our parents' eyes, left us stragglers. We fell out of all ranks. Among +the sights proposed for our instruction, that which befitted us best was +an eclipse of the moon, done at leisure. In good time we found the moon +in the sky, in good time the eclipse set in and made reasonable progress; +we kept up with everything. + +It is too often required of children that they should adjust themselves +to the world, practised and alert. But it would be more to the purpose +that the world should adjust itself to children in all its dealings with +them. Those who run and keep together have to run at the pace of the +tardiest. But we are apt to command instant obedience, stripped of the +little pauses that a child, while very young, cannot act without. It is +not a child of ten or twelve that needs them so; it is the young creature +who has but lately ceased to be a baby, slow to be startled. + +We have but to consider all that it implies of the loitering of senses +and of an unprepared consciousness--this capacity for receiving a great +shock from a noise and this perception of the shock after two or three +appreciable moments--if we would know anything of the moments of a baby + +Even as we must learn that our time, when it is long, is too long for +children, so must we learn that our time, when it is short, is too short +for them. When it is exceedingly short they cannot, without an unnatural +effort, have any perception of it. When children do not see the jokes of +the elderly, and disappoint expectation in other ways, only less +intimate, the reason is almost always there. The child cannot turn in +mid-career; he goes fast, but the impetus took place moments ago. + + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, one +significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. This +is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the value of +process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the very wayfaring of +progress. With this is a resignation to change, and something more than +resignation--a delight in those qualities that could not be but for their +transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the world, +for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, and that for +the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now hold, perhaps, +that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held it high, we should +acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred years +ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the full stature +of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future hunting. If her +song is not restless, it is because she has a sense of the results of +time, and has submitted her heart to experience. Childhood is a time of +danger; "Would it were done." But, meanwhile, the right thing is to put +it to sleep and guard its slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies +to the child of his hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she +spins, and a song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child--"that +pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was chiefly +precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of the man he +never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when the boy was dead, +says of him: "At two and a half years of age he pronounced English, +Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly read in these three +languages." As he lived precisely five years, all he did was done at +that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the +entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make +congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and _vice versa_, construe +and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, +verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a +considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for +Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man is not +to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; it is the +very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those hasty +times. All being favourable, the child of Evelyn's studious home would +have done all these things in the course of nature within a few years. It +was the fact that he did them out of the course of nature that was, to +Evelyn, so exquisite. The course of nature had not any beauty in his +eyes. It might be borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not +admired for the majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns +with him "the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" +and without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too flattering +to the estate of man. They thought their little boy strangely hopeful +because he was so quick on his way to be something else. They lost the +timely perfection the while they were so intent upon their hopes. And +yet it is our own modern age that is charged with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, must +rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not slighting +it, or bidding it hasten its work, not yet hailing it, with Faust, "Stay, +thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made gay and visible, and the +world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the +act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every passage is a goal, +and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; but some of them wear +apparent wings. + +_Tout passe_. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this question +most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, this +suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time of +fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because they had +the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of this unpausing +life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight years +old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause to be +proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in idleness by +an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated into any rudiments" +till he was four years of age. He seems even to have been a youth of +eight before Latin was seriously begun; but this fact he is evidently, in +after years, with a total lack of a sense of humour, rather ashamed of, +and hardly acknowledges. It is difficult to imagine what childhood must +have been when nobody, looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything +that was proper to five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of +themselves and of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has nothing +to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in it. Twice are +children not his own mentioned in his diary. Once he goes to the wedding +of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, but not, evidently, an +occasion of sensibility. Another time he stands by, in a French +hospital, while a youth of less than nine years of age undergoes a +frightful surgical operation "with extraordinary patience." "The use I +made of it was to give Almighty God hearty thanks that I had not been +subject to this deplorable infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there were +in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon being +children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. Art, for +example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and there were the +prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who is hauling up his +little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" might be +called Tommy. But there were no "little radiant girls." Now and then an +"Education of the Virgin" is the exception, and then it is always a +matter of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when +they were so young that their hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped +through their fetters, they are always recorded as refusing importunate +suitors, which seems necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval +mind, but mars them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in the +Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa "who +passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as the least +stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state with men and +maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact rules, such as that +of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent example and instruction +to the other maids of honour, was "severely careful how she might give +the least countenance to that liberty which the gallants there did +usually assume," refused the addresses of the "greatest persons," and was +as famous for her beauty as for her wit. One would like to forget the +age at which she did these things. When she began her service she was +eleven. When she was making her rule never to speak to the King she was +not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April into +May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if they +shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The particular +year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as who should say a +fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at two years old, and +ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as Keats a poet would not +have patience with the process of the seasons, but boasted of untimely +flowers. The "musk-rose" is never in fact the child of mid-May, as he +has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear of +losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the +bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen in the +"Spectator" has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the last six +years." The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the +stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl +of thirteen, "willing to settle in the world as soon as she can." She +adds, "I have a good portion which they cannot hinder me of." This +correspondent is one of "the women who seldom ask advice before they have +bought their wedding clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age +that could think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a later +century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, and all +things complete in their day because it is their day, and has its +appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather than a +sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children to seem, +at last, something else than a defect. + + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. +There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in +sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. Summer dusk, +especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how you may. +They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent upon all kinds of +close industries, breathing hard over choppings and poundings. But when +late twilight comes, there comes also the punctual wildness. The +children will run and pursue, and laugh for the mere movement--it does so +jolt their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and +crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours. The +children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the mimicry of +hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike some +blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual +child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done +for freedom under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict with +the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy of men +should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens at some +time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts of the +poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved by +children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to beguile the +time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was persuading another to +play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable hour. +It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The habit of +prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of the fixity of +some customs in mankind. But if the inquirers who appeal to that +beginning remembered better their own infancy, they would seek no +further. See the habits in falling to sleep which have children in their +thralldom. Try to overcome them in any child, and his own conviction of +their high antiquity weakens your hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French sleep- +song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of history as +must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, with a sense of the +incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. "Le Bon Roi Dagobert" +has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh. The nurse +knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she herself +slept to when a child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in "Le Pont +d'Avignon," is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the _tete a tete_ +of child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered rooms at night. +"Malbrook" would be comparatively modern, were not all things that are +sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of +them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate races +that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white +child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical +night. His closing eyes are filled with alien images. + + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious of +something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his +apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing than the +destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand where they did, +and the mere relation of time is as it was. But that which has fallen +together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and lies in a little heap, is +the past itself--time--the fact of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are no +more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit of +measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing of +paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He had +thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the states, +the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the measure which +he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. His first ten years +had given him the illusion of a most august scale and measure. It was +then that he conceived Antiquity. But now! Is it to a decade of ten +such little years as these now in his hand--ten of his mature years--that +men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life +shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a most +noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He attributes an +overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers distance. He, and +he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. He creates more than +mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting into the extremities of the +past. He assigns the Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of +Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having conceived +old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the mystery to the mind +of the man. The man perceives at last all the illusion, but he cannot +forget what was his conviction when he was a child. He had once a +persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for nothing. The enormous +undeception that comes upon him still leaves spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive shocks. It +is as though one strained level eyes towards the horizon, and then were +bidden to shorten his sight and to close his search within a poor half +acre before his face. Now, it is that he suddenly perceives the hitherto +remote, remote youth of his own parents to have been something familiarly +near, so measured by his new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila +that is displaced. Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. +There needs no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world--our contemporary world--is not very mysterious. We +perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we now consider, jolted +the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that he +was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, for +instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for the child +to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own magnificent +measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus they belong to him +as he is now--a man; and not to him as he was once--a child. It was +quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten years' rule along the path +from our time to theirs; that path must be skipped by the nimble yard in +the man's present possession. Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for +the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the illusion +of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself Antiquity--to +every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of childhood cannot make +Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; but the beginning +of every life is older than Abraham. _There_ is the abyss of time. Let +a man turn to his own childhood--no further--if he would renew his sense +of remoteness, and of the mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes; +but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension +not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive +apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real apprehension +when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no +historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and +unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is why +it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at that present +age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But +he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every one was seven years +old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" history is taught in the only +ancient days. So, for a time, the world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges the +sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion is over +and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught back and +chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man remains capable +of great spaces of time. He will not find them in Egypt, it is true, but +he finds them within, he contains them, he is aware of them. History has +fallen together, but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, +stretches beyond and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years that +are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great disillusion shall +never shorten those years, nor set nearer together the days that made +them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far apart" is wonderful. The +past of childhood is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one +point; it has summits a world away one from the other. Year from year +differs as the antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And +the man of thirty-five knows for ever afterwards what is flight, even +though he finds no great historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious childhood, +which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. Many other +moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten years. Hours of +weariness are long--not with a mysterious length, but with a mere length +of protraction, so that the things called minutes and half-hours by the +elderly may be something else to their apparent contemporaries, the +children. The ancient moment is not merely one of these--it is a space +not of long, but of immeasurable, time. It is the moment of going to +sleep. The man knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has +long ceased to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough +margin of dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He +knows that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those +hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who +passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he +meets there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable +time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She sings +absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may mean to +waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell of the +beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of them all +his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech can well +express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is beset +with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere +adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further +back--it is already so far. That is, it looks as remote to the memory of +a man of thirty as to that of a man of seventy. What are a mere forty +years of added later life in the contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} It is worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, and +the ascription of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted phrase, a +letter of Stevenson's was published, and proved that he had read Lucy +Hutchinson's writings, and that he did not love her. "I have possessed +myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I admire, etc. . . I +sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and beaten her, in the +bitterness of my spirit. . . The way in which she talks of herself makes +one's blood run cold." He was young at that time of writing, and perhaps +hardly aware of the lesson in English he had taken from her. We know +that he never wasted the opportunity for such a lesson; and the fact that +he did allow her to administer one to him in right seventeenth-century +diction is established--it is not too bold to say so--by my recognition +of his style in her own. I had surely caught the retrospective reflex +note, heard first in his voice, recognized in hers. + +{2} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1434.txt or 1434.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/1434 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: +https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + |